Insane TSLA weekly option fill, busted

[d08]

And let me throw one more thing at ya.... ask them politely..... and I promise you..... if you're nice and understanding.... you can milk em for 60 free days of commission free trading.... especially if you have to take a loss. Because you could have got out of that thing at a wash. Its no skin off their nose to pony this up.

https://www.tdameritrade.com/specialoffer.page

Nice but firm. Just being nice gets you nowhere.

 

[tb123]

Thanks! Hope it works, still waiting for a call back from TD Direct Investing help supervisor!

 

[vanzandt]

Thanks! Hope it works, still waiting for a call back from TD Direct Investing help supervisor!

There's no doubt that when trading resumed, that call would have been worth at least $12. You couldn't close it because it had "already been closed". They need to at least value your call north of the $5 you paid and come off with some serious comps imo. I mean you have a right to be pissed imo.

 

[tb123]

They offered me 200 hundred US as a gesture of good will to call it case closed. I said im down 577 pretty much right now, i would like the procedure reviewed and at least 60 days of free trades, they said no can do. Was told by TD that i can have them review the calls of what i was told etc, and then decide told them to do that. Damn, lesson learned

 

[FSU]

You're not really "down" $577 because of them. The bust was legitimate and not their fault. The question was when they informed you of it and where you could have exited the call when you found out vs where you could have exited it if you knew before the opening. $200 sounds reasonable to me.

 

[tb123]

Thanks FSU
They are going to review the calls and check if they followed their own procedures effectively. Maybe can squeeze them for a bit more, but if not will take the 200.

 

[d08]

You're not really "down" $577 because of them. The bust was legitimate and not their fault. The question was when they informed you of it and where you could have exited the call when you found out vs where you could have exited it if you knew before the opening. $200 sounds reasonable to me.

Agree. IB would give you nothing in this scenario, most likely.

 

[sprstpd]

Hi all,

Very new to this forum, and hoping to get some advice on a busted TSLA call trade in the last 24 hours.

Just before trading was halted on TSLA on August 7th, i purchased a 380C expiring on Aug 10th at 5.77 through TD Ameritrade.

At that time i had no idea what was going to happen to the underlying price upon trading resumption (never held a position during halted trading before), so i set a sell to close order at 120, so effectively 12K for 577 dollar contract. I just threw this out there as you never know what could happen in a panic situation, with folks covering and what not.

To my extreme suprise it got filled at 12K 5 mins before market close, so about 10 mins after TSLA resumed trading. My plan was to close the position that day, for a small gain, but id clearly hit the lottery when it got filled and funds hit my trading account.

Next day i got a vmail for TD which i promptly returned to be told that trade was busted due to catastrophic error condition 6.25 in the rules, and that was that. I have since spent today finding out what can be done by me for recourse, as the price opened lower today.

Could anyone offer any advice if i have any recourse available to me? I get that it was a ridiculous fill, but if its human error on the other party, not sure i should i eat the trade right? TD and CBOE regulatory teams have been zero help today, hope someone here can help!

Thanks in advance

If you get a fill like that, you never know what your true market position is until after the fact. There are rules for busting trades and one of them is that the bust request has to be filed within a certain amount of time (usually less than an hour). Theoretically you can wait an hour and then call your broker and ask if the trade has been busted. But there are always exceptions for busts when the price is so far away from the market as to be ridiculous. Those types of trades can sometimes be busted far past the normal time window.

In the future, you have to assume your fill would be busted sometime in the future (because of the ridiculous price) and then sell one more contract in anticipation of the first one being busted (while the prices on the options were still high). Then when the first sell gets busted, you'll be flat with a profit. And if the first sell does not get busted, you'll get a windfall profit on that contract and some other residual profit/loss on the second sold contract. So either way you have some protection.