From my twitter feed:

17 minutes ago

just had longest market order fill ever on CE… 2.5 minutes! I wanted 29.40 but got 29.53. Bastards! Broker investigating…

3 minutes ago

scottrade price-improved me to 29.40 on my bad CE fill. So, when I called them bastards, what I meant was, they rule. :-)

Here’s the 10-minute chart of the trade on Celanese Corporation (NYSE: CE). The blue lines mark the (admittedly sloppy) ascending triangle I was using as the basis of the trade. My stop was under the lower trendline. My target was a push above the HOD, which was 2R away. It was hit fairly quickly.

Now, about that fill… Two and a half minutes, on a market order. “My, this order is taking a long time,” I observed calmly. Yeah, right! I was severely pissed off. I watched lots of prints go by. The price walked up 15 cents from my intended entry at 29.40, with thousands of shares trading. I tried to cancel my order several times, but it wouldn’t let me since it was a NYSE market order that was in the queue already. Talk about a helpless feeling! Plus, since I was finally filled as the price was on the way down from its initial spike, I started off this trade in the red. That was no fun!

But, I held it together, and waited for the price to run up again. Luckily, it never went below 29.35 or so. At 29.33, I would have been in the red by my intended 1R amount, and I’d have to make a hard decision about bailing, or sticking to my original stop loss point (which would mean risking more than I initially intended to risk).

After I was out of the trade, I called up Scottrade. I’ve only done that a couple times, but it has always been a very pleasant experience. They looked at the trade, and about 15 minutes later they price improved me to the ask price at the time I entered my order. Very nice! Even though other brokers have more frills, it’s stuff like this that keeps me with scottrade. Plus, I know if it ever gets really bad I can go down the street to their office and yell at someone in person. Gotta love that.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
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CE	| |

I only wanted to make one trade today, and I couldn’t take it, due to lack of shares available to short. Sigh… It was Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co. (Nasdaq: LEND). I had a case that I have often, when a narrow bar shows up: the bar was too narrow, for my tastes, meaning I wouldn’t be comfortable with a stop that small. Any amount of noise could stop me out. To me, it doesn’t represent consolidation so much as a lack of trading activity. So, I waited a couple bars until I saw an entry I was happier with.

So, I am thrilled to see a trade I actually like, in yet another bland market day (or was I just watching the wrong stocks?). And, I enter my order, and get this message back saying “there are only 1000 shares available to short.” One of the joys of scottrade is that you can’t check for shortable shares before you just try to execute your order. Anyway, I thought, fine, 1000 shares. I send a second order, and for some reason I get the same response: “You have requested a short sale of 1000 shares, but there are only 1000 shares available to short.” WTF? By now, the price has gone down a bit from my desired entry at 24.85, and I’m disgusted with it, so I let the trade go.

It would have worked out okay, though… 3 R or so against my stop at 25.00, exiting after the hammer-shoped candle.

Oh well.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
LEND	| |