Quote from C Robinson:
Mr. DeSano, 43 years old and a 12-year Fidelity veteran, declined to cite specific cases of suspect trades by specialists. But he said: "I could give you 9,000 examples." He said Fidelity had stopped lodging complaints because he said the rules are so gray that it never yielded results.
"You never get any satisfaction, so you stop complaining," he said.
i've been trading for nearly 6 years and i have to echo this sentiment exactly. you know you've been screwed, the floor knows you've been screwed and everyone knows there is nothing that is going to be done about it....it's just business as usual....... i hope it changes.
Since there is nothing to complain about and no one to really complain towhen trading OTC, you can only "get screwed" by 3% of the stock price (Island parameters), and sometimes even worse when trading with other entities. But, very few ever complain, because it is fruitless.
We (BT) have complaints against the NYSE once in a while, and have recovered a lot of $$$ for our traders. These price adjustments, trade fills, etc. are made in virtually every case that we complain about. We try to teach our people what to be concerned about, and never to "cry wolf'... which may help our cause. When we complain, they seem to listen, and take things pretty seriously...whether it's 100 shares, or 10,000 shares.
Every complaint about ECN's or OTC hs not been resolved with any satisfaction (I'll admit that we don't trade a lot of Naz, but we still do a few million shares a year).
Let's all put our heads together and find a way to make a decent system better, rather than revert to a system where there is no marketplace.
I'm meeting with the people from the AMEX today, who want to start making markets in NAZ stocks, so we can start doing opening only orders, and MOC's etc. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.... (Yeah, I know....the AMEX??). But if their trying to "clean up their act" I'm willing to help.
Don
