October 9, 2009
Hi — I have an account with Ameritrade and was short FAV. Without any warning they forced me to cover today citing an SEC ruling. This cost me over $1000 as they sold at 9:30 AM when the spread was ludicrous. This is no way to protect me as an investor. All you are doing is allowing bulls to run over those of us who are hedging our long positions or keeping stocks in check. The fund is trading at a 20% premium to NAV — if you just let bulls run this up to 50%+ premiums ... you hurt the ignorant retail investor who buys at the top. Please explain how this can happen and why they are forced to sell at 9:30 AM. At least tell them to wait until the market is open and there is a liquid market for the security. All you did here was enrich someone who can't believe someone would be so stupid to put a market order in at 9:30 AM for a stock with 100k or less shares traded per day. I'm of course also asking if Ameritrade abided by the rules here. No warning at all? Why not an email a day or two ago to tell me that they might need me to cover this or that it might be subject to SEC buy-in. They had to know they were close to needing to do so. I also don't trust the process of how they decide who has to give up their shorts. Can you ask for a list of who was short and require them to show you how they selected who had to cover? Please consider this a formal complaint against Ameritrade unless you tell me that the SEC is 100% responsible for this action and that Ameritrade did everything right. If that is the case, please tell me who I can file a formal complaint with at the SEC. There is no way this makes any sense at all - you aren't protecting the retail investor and you are simply creating another bubble that will pop — leaving the institutional investors sending you thank you notes and the retail investors once again holding the bag. Mark Perilman