I have a small account that I just opened recently with this firm. I thought that since they have a flat rate for any number of contracts, it might be a good place to trade calendar spreads.
To open the account, I transferred a mutual fund into it. I then sold some of the shares of the fund last Friday. It's a small cap fund, and the RUT was rising pretty nicely that day.
I got a phone call and email from OH saying that I had placed the order after market close and that it would therefore be executed on Monday (when the RUT was falling).
For those who may not know this, mutual fund trades don't trade intraday; trades placed prior to the close are executed at that day's closing price.
I responded that they were mistaken, and said that I had placed the trade well before the close, and told them that I wanted the Friday closing price, not the Monday closing price. I had no way to prove this, since there's nothing on the site that gives you the date and time of an order that hasn't been executed yet. Maybe they give you a popup that says your trade was accepted or recognized or something, but I did not print it out.
Upon doing some additional research, OH discovered that I was correct. Their explanation was that mutual funds are not their specialty and that something got messed up with the trade. Since it was too paperwork-intensive for them to give me the Friday price, they called me and offered me some commission-free trades to cover the difference in price. I accepted this.
I'm not sure whether to be impressed that they called me, explained the problem and followed up on it, or annoyed that they screwed this up. I don't have time to print off every trade with the time and date. I've never had anything like this happen before, with mutual funds or anything else. In the past I've used Brown, Etrade, and Scottrade, and now I use IB and MB Trading.
I'm curious as to what others think. I don't have enough experience with this firm yet to evaluate them otherwise.
To open the account, I transferred a mutual fund into it. I then sold some of the shares of the fund last Friday. It's a small cap fund, and the RUT was rising pretty nicely that day.
I got a phone call and email from OH saying that I had placed the order after market close and that it would therefore be executed on Monday (when the RUT was falling).
For those who may not know this, mutual fund trades don't trade intraday; trades placed prior to the close are executed at that day's closing price.
I responded that they were mistaken, and said that I had placed the trade well before the close, and told them that I wanted the Friday closing price, not the Monday closing price. I had no way to prove this, since there's nothing on the site that gives you the date and time of an order that hasn't been executed yet. Maybe they give you a popup that says your trade was accepted or recognized or something, but I did not print it out.
Upon doing some additional research, OH discovered that I was correct. Their explanation was that mutual funds are not their specialty and that something got messed up with the trade. Since it was too paperwork-intensive for them to give me the Friday price, they called me and offered me some commission-free trades to cover the difference in price. I accepted this.
I'm not sure whether to be impressed that they called me, explained the problem and followed up on it, or annoyed that they screwed this up. I don't have time to print off every trade with the time and date. I've never had anything like this happen before, with mutual funds or anything else. In the past I've used Brown, Etrade, and Scottrade, and now I use IB and MB Trading.
I'm curious as to what others think. I don't have enough experience with this firm yet to evaluate them otherwise.
