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The ZAP nursery rhyme.......There was a crooked man, And he walked a crooked
mile. He found a crooked sixpense, beside a crooked stile. He bought a
crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. And they all lived together, in a
little crooked house.
All the Best on your choice of a broker,.......The Jolly Roger
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike <pooltreatments@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 2:12 PM
Subject: RE: Zap Futures/PerpETrader
> Be very wary of Zap futures. I know MANy people that have run screaming
> from them. My personal experience with them was bone chilling!
>
> Zap futures are THE WORST.
>
> I have had personal experience with them and traded the SP Large
> Contract with several other people who bad experiences with them too.
>
> Their "software" is slow and confusing to operate. even their own tech
> admits it is not friendly to use. It goes down OFTEN and when it does
> the order desk is in a frenzy. You will be left on hold for minutes
> waiting for confirmation of a fill. I had many bad experiences with them
> and their software. ANY error is automatically blamed on you because as
> they told me "you are your own broker, so its your problem" - nice
>
> If there is an "error" that turns out to be a windfall for you they
> subtract the money from your account. If the "error" costs you money
> guess what .....
>
> The main problem with them is that you consistantly get the WORST
> POSSIBLE fills. We used to joke about it because it was so predictable.
> All you had to do was watch the 1 min candle when you placed your order.
> Whatever the worst price was, thats the price you got. Everytime. It was
> a joke.
>
> We strongly suspected a scam because the timestamps are a dead givaway.
> Lets say you hit your button to send the order at 09:00:00am. It is
> routed to their server and the tops system instantly. No problems there.
> Then the jiggery pokery starts. Lets say your order is actually filled
> at 09:00:06 (on a good day), you will not get that confirmation for at
> least 20secs minimum, sometimes as much as 2 minutes (happend to a
> trader i know as we watched it - not a fast market either). So now your
> order has been sat on for all that time while the market moved.
>
> So eventually your printer spits out your fill and you realize you just
> got screwed again so, you pick up the phone and call the order desk. If
> you ask them to look up that particular trade (which they refuse to do
> untill after the market has closed) then you will discover there are in
> fact 4 timestamps associated with your order. Time sent, time received,
> time filled, time confirmed.
>
> Hmmmmm, now call me suspicious if you like, but I wonder what price I
> got in between the order being filled and the confirmation being sent?
> do you think its A) the actual price of the trade, or B) THE WORST
> POSSIBLE FILL PRICE THAT THEY CAN LEGALLY GIVE YOU! (And by the way
> some prices we got were so bad the market never actually traded at that
> price!!)
>
> and this is just one of the many ways you get screwed with ZAP.
>
> If you place a Limit, they will not execute it unless it trades through
> your price by 1/2pt. Whatever benefits are offered by the CUBS terminal
> are severly outweighed by the position of the terminal in the pits. In a
> recent visit to the CME (to find a better broker) we met with several
> locals and brokers who explained why you will allways get the worst fill
> price.
>
> The terminal is in the center of the pit and is surrounded by the least
> experienced locals trying to scalp their living. These locals dont take
> positions or lead the market thats why they stand there. The orice
> action is around the edge of the pit. This is where direction changes
> first. When you place your order the local standing next to Tom who
> operates the terminal, simply buys at the better price and sells to him.
> This is their arrangement.
>
> So now you have two factors working against you. Most of their customers
> will pay $25 per side, plus of course the de-facto minimum 1/2 pt
> "slippage" (actually "screwage" is a more accurate term), and sometimes
> it was as much as 1.5pts! The only reason we stayed with them for a
> while was because we negotiated a deal for $12 per side. Our true cost
> was in fact 125+12 per side!
>
> The final straw for me was when I was left in a position all thorugh
> lunch without knowing it. Their server crashed a couple of times in the
> morning and did not notify me that an order was sitting out there. I
> found out hours later when I was down 5 pts on the large SP. Then the
> software says it has codes for certain things, but in fact you will get
> different codes that are confusing. Their tech even admits he doesnt
> know why, or what they mean!
>
> After some research I found another group of traders that had run
> screaming from ZAP. They steered me to another broker who is great.
> Their guy is at the edge of the pit. The fills are super fast while you
> wait and most of our group report often getting fills at better prices!
> The system we were using was a short time frame system so slippage was
> important.
>
> Meanwhile the ZAP owner is busy promoting their new communications
> package as some "information" highway to sucknewbies into thier terrible
> service. When we confronted him about the many problems of their service
> at a recent show, he just slithered away and took a phone call.
>
> Then their web based Account Info is a nightmare that lists all your
> trades. It CANNOT be viewed in chronological order. So all you see is
> long list of buys followed by a long list of sells. If youwant to match
> them up you need to d/l them, import them into excell, and cut and paste
> them line by line to make sense of what you did that day. I spent 4hrs
> sorting out THEIR mess up one day.
>
>
>
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