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* * * * THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Saturday/Sunday, July 28 29, 2007 -
The key to getting your orders into
the system: Know all of the channels
your brokerage firm offers. For most
firms these days that means online
GREEN THUMB Ms. Dickson eventually cultivated a trading, interact ive vo i ce- b ase d t ra d-
$y Jeff D. Opdyke relationship with another more-respon- ing on the phone, toll-free customer-
____________ _____________
And Susanne Craig sive broker who worked in the same
-
-*
office as her bro-
]
ker and shifted
her business to
service phone numbers ,- and , increas-
bigly, access via wireless devices like
BlackBerrys. But each of these may re-
quire a password or different phone
TT/hi-i
It' 0
-c'.
him. The Dicksons numbers , and investors need to have
that information at hand.
.- also filed an arbi-
If you're away from your corn-
If Ou(7an •- ,
tration claim
against Morgan
-
Stey, lining
p uter and you can't reach your bro-
ker on the phone, call another
H I' '' '
branch in anothercity or state; they
ft ah he Bro r
e
, the firm gave
Hc.. to ensure your them fraudulent should be able to assist.
You can also protect yourself
T
HE HARDEST ThVIE to reach
your broker might be when
' trd gets made:
Be read to
' alternate 'tradin
investment ad-
vice. A Morgan
Stanley spokes-
man says allega-
E'Trade and Morgan Stanley say cli-
ents may want to consider setting up
standing stop-loss orders that will au-
you need him the most, channel that " our tions the Dick- tomatically implement pre-existing
Louisiana school bus driver Martha firr' y ifer sell orders when a particular price tar
Dickson was returning from her morn sons couldn t
Set up a stop-loss reach their ce-igi get is reached This way even if the
rng route on a difficult trading day m market is tanking and you cant get
2001 Womed that her and her bus order t-eed of nal broker are
time to t rade b ase less Some through your orders will be executed
band s life savings would be hit she Joseph C. Peiffer, a New Orleans-
says she called her Morgan Stanley utoi'ntically. one was always
available to i based lawyer who represents custom
broker several times Instead she says ers with complaints against Wall
her calls went right to his assistant aa urach in
L cuss client con-
: cerns . " Street firms, says it's unusual for in-
who assured her everything was fine. vestors to bring a case of negligence
At a time
Whether caused by international simply because they couldn't contact
turmoil or a market selloff like hap- when stock prices are sinldng and
trading activity surging-and inves- a broker on the phone. However,
penéd on Thursday and Friday, hives- that comp'aint is a familiar refrain
tors can, on occasion, find them- tors are flooding brokerage firms with
sell orders-what's an investor to do? with clients who've lost money, and
selves unableto trade because on- it's often an element in nlost of the
line electronic systems are over- In an electronic age, orders left, on
voice mail or delivered by email or fax cases he has handled.
loaded, or because their broker is "Brokers are always happy to talk
suddenly- unreachable by phone , would seem to circumvent any poten-
- tial roadblock. Only, they don't. Broker- when things are going up, " he says.
age firms generally won't accept such "But market drops expose other
orders because firms can't guarantee problems in a customer's portfolio,
when a brokur th11 get around to and often the broker just won't get
checlong such messages on a busy day. on the ph.i when that hapuens."