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If you call your broker, any broker, they will almost always tell you Their
bid/ask is the best. Call DTN and they will tell you Their bid/ask is the
best. It's kinda like looking in the adds in the newspaper for a used car,
All the cars are in Excellent condition.
Kohath
----- Original Message -----
From: Dick Crotinger <dangle@xxxxxxx>
To: <realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 1999 4:25 PM
Subject: OPTN: How can they do that? (here's how)
> I bleated here a couple of weeks ago about closing a long call stock
option
> trade "at the market" and watching the bid price drop momentarily to
> accomodate me. Those who responded seemed to indicate, "that's what you
get
> for closing a trade 'at the market'."
>
> Not one to learn my lessons easily, I opened another long call position in
> the same option, subsequent series, last week. It continued to go against
> me this week, so I decided to close it today, at a limit equal to the
> current bid. The market was 5/16 bid, 7/16 offered, and I offered 10 at
> 5/16. My DTN/Ensign screen showed bid and offer both at 3/8, but I know
not
> to trust it (isn't that sad?). I trade over the net via Dreyfus.
>
> It did in fact fill at my limit, taking 15 minutes to fill near the close
of
> trading. My Ensign screen showed my offer becoming the current offer,
with
> the bid remaining as previously posted, i.e., bid at 3/8, asked at 5/16
> (sic). The Dreyfus quote remained bid at 5/16, offered at 7/16.
> Immediately as my trade filled, 25 more contracts filled at 7/16, and
after
> the close I decided to give the folks at Dreyfus a call and find out what
> was going on.
>
> I talked to a supervisor, and was told that options on this particular
> market (Triton Energy - symbol 'OIL') trade on all four options exchanges,
> with the primary being the PHLX. Much to my surprise, the Dreyfus quote
> (which I got when the trade was placed... a "realtime" quote) reflects the
> current LOWEST offer and HIGHEST bid from each of the four exchanges, and
at
> the time I submitted my trade, the CBOE quote (unknown to me) was 3/16
bid,
> 3/8 asked. This then represented the actual market on the bid side, even
> though the reflection on the Dreyfus quote screen was for 5/16. I asked
> about REAS eligibility, and was told that IT CHANGES THROUGHOUT THE DAY...
> some markets that open "eligible" even revert later in the day, and vice
> versa. And of course none of this is reflected, either on the DTN screen
or
> the Dreyfus order screen.
>
> DBC/BMI quit carrying the quotes for the different exchanges last fall
> ("enhancing" their service), and to my knowledge, DTN has never indicated
> different quotes per exchange. Unless I quit trading over the net and
place
> my orders thru a broker, I know of no way to gain access to this
> information. And even the guy at Dreyfus said, "don't count on it..."
>
> The options exchanges reputedly wonder why the public orders are drying
up.
> It's because SOME of us are discovering that you can't trade against this
> kind of stacked deck. No wonder the news services call it "gambling."
>
> a very frustrated...
> Dick Crotinger
>
>
>
>
>
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