Should I blame my broker?

[peilthetraveler]

Yeah market orders should fill near instantly. Whos your broker? (not one of those $2-4 per trade unlimited share brokers i hope, as those guys usually batch up orders and execute a couple times a day)

Last time I had an order take a long time like that (30 minutes to fill a market order for me) it was back when you actually had to call a broker, who then had to call the floor of the exchange, who then had to buy or sell, then call the broker back, then call me back. Generally those orders back then got filled in a minute or two, but i still remember that day when it took 30 minutes. I would've complained about how long it took, but the price worked to my advantage that day and I made $800. (had a $5k account so it was a pretty good day to say the least)

 

[charts]

Quote from frozen_trader:

thanks for your reply

Yes, it was on Thursday, the market was falling and I wanted to BUY a liquid stock. I ended up buying, but the order was *filled* an hour after it had been placed and 55 minutes after it had been canceled.

All I wanted to know is whether the broker is to blame for the delay or not. It has nothing to do with limit or market orders.
In fact, I am glad that the order was executed as the market skyrocketed after the purchase. On the other hand, I am upset by the delay.

... maybe your order was routed to a manual exchange, or it was filled in a moment with very wide spreads ? What was the stock? What time? What type of order? What exchange? What price did you get filled with what time stamp?

NEW CIRCUIT BREAKERS MULLED

On Monday, the heads of major exchanges and the SEC agreed to strengthen existing market-wide circuit breakers, develop uniform safeguards for individual stocks and come up with clear rules on erasing erroneous trades.

One person familiar with the discussions said the major exchanges are considering a new circuit breaker for stocks listed on the Standard & Poor's 500 index that would trigger a pause in trading if an individual stock fell more than 10 percent in a five minute period.

In the hours after the May 6 market swoon, backbiting initially broke out among the exchanges. The sniping has since largely died down as the main market venues propose reforms that they believe they can live with.

CME Group Inc, the world's biggest futures exchange operator, said there needed to be better coordination across futures, securities and options markets.

NYSE said regulators should require all trading venues use a coordinated mechanism to pause trading.

Nasdaq suggested halting trading for 15 minutes when the Standard & Poor's 500 index drops by 5 percent; for an hour when it drops 10 percent; and for the rest of the trading day when there is a 20 percent drop.

Currently, circuit breakers exist for broader market drops and are tripped at the 10-percent and 20-percent thresholds.

Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P never reached the crucial trigger point on May 6. The Dow fell as much as 9.2 percent and the S&P 500 was off as much as 8.6 percent during the latter half of Thursday's trading day

 

[frozen_trader]

Yeah market orders should fill near instantly. Whos your broker?

This order was placed with TDA. I don´t depend on a single broker, though

Last time I had an order take a long time like that (30 minutes to fill a market order for me) it was back when you actually had to call a broker, who then had to call the floor of the exchange, who then had to buy or sell, then call the broker back, then call me back.

yeah, I remember those days... I bought my first stock 19 years ago.

Anyway, I just wanted to know if I was the only one who suffered such a delay that day and so far it does seem so.

I´m thinking of closing the position, then withdraw all the money from that account, and finally let the broker know how disappointed I am for the delay.

 

[aradhana]

I think brokers should not be blamed because a number of options are available. Its should be the investor who should be careful at what he is investing at !

 

[maninjapan]

answer is Yes! If in doubt blame your broker, If that doesnt work curse and take it out on your PC.

 

[spindr0]

Quote from frozen_trader:

Yes, it was on Thursday, the market was falling and I wanted to BUY a liquid stock. I ended up buying, but the order was *filled* an hour after it had been placed and 55 minutes after it had been canceled.

Make sure the fill time is an hour later not the report time.

Tho prolly not relevant to today, in '87 I had some BSC covered calls that expired on Fri 10/16 maybe 50-75 cts in the money. That means that they should have been exercised (I sell the stock at the strike price of 17-1/2). Monday was the crash and my broker couldn't tell me for 6 trading days if I stiill owned the stock or not. By the time they figured it out, BSC was 14+. My claim was that their inability to inform me prevented me from acting in my best interest. They made up the difference.

With the arb agreements we sign today, might be a very different story. But I'd chase them up the ladder (office manager, compliance, etc.) and would not accept a simple no response from a broker or a denial via a form letter/E-mail.

 

[atrocious]

Quote from aradhana:

I think brokers should not be blamed because a number of options are available. Its should be the investor who should be careful at what he is investing at !

WTF? Absolute nonsense, there is no excuse for a 60 minute delay.

Shit happens, systems go down, but a broker has a fiduciary duty to adjust that trade if the market order was accepted with a proper time stamp. Meet halfway, delay it 5-10 minutes, do something.

In my years of working for a reputable retail broker, we always made the customer whole in situations like that. If you can't take the order because of chaos or system problems, you reject it.

OP - Please complain to your broker ASAP and let us know what happens.

 

[TheGoonior]

You say that you canceled the order and that the status changed to "Pending." Do you have confirmation that the order was actually canceled? I don't know what broker you are using, but the ones I'm familiar give you feedback in that regard: Fidelity shows you a canceled message for an order. TOS has an order screen where you can see if it was canceled. IB has a little red colored bar by the status, etc, etc. Until then, you must assume that the order is still live to be safe.
If you can verify that the order was canceled and the execution took place after that, maybe you have a case. It might have been a good deal to get on the horn (or chat or whatever) when it didn't immediately cancel.

My $0.02.

 

[hippie]

Quote from frozen_trader:

thanks guys for your replies.

just wanted to know if it is acceptable for a broker to execute an order that was canceled an hour ago, either market or limit

the profit would have been much larger if they had executed the order within an ordinary timeframe

Absolutely not. Who is your broker? Not Interactive Brokers?

 

[LEAPup]

Quote from frozen_trader:

thanks guys for your replies.

just wanted to know if it is acceptable for a broker to execute an order that was canceled an hour ago, either market or limit

the profit would have been much larger if they had executed the order within an ordinary timeframe

NO!!!!!!!!!! NOT acceptable!!!!!!!! That order should have been cancelled immediately! Who was the broker?