Tales from the Pit

Option spreads were horribly wide. Last tick 5.72; Bid 4.40; Ask 5.85. That spread is a deal breaker for exiting a position. Volatility was high, because there were no buyers AND no put sellers (except me apparently). This was obvious when I placed my limit order at 5.70 and it sat there, then at 5.20, and it sat there. Before the close, the spreads were getting better.. Bid 4.90; Ask 5.60. I took that opportunity to exit unfavorably, but at least lower my Put exposure.

Another interesting note. On the IWM Puts, there were 4732 contracts floating at bid AND ask limits. Each time I moved my limit, Mr Market Maker or HFTs came in right in front of my limit order, so I effectively was fighting to get out of a position with the market maker, because my puny position was eclipsed by the 4732 contracts floating at the same limit. Great liquidity, huh?

ThinkOrSwim (TOS) posted a message @13:45:39 "Intraday Futures Requirements have been raised to 50% due to market volatility."

In the futures, with supposed "high liquidity" offered bid/ask spreads that were tight, but jumped 3-5 points within seconds! No sooner had I grabbed a long ESM0 at 1093.25 @13:48:46, and it plunged to 1084.50 @13:49:48. At 13:51:10, the market was showing signs of stabilizing, and printed 1097.25 and at 13:54:52 it printed 1109.25.


Hitting buy/sell in the TOS trader took 3-8 seconds to complete. This showed the system was overstressed. The orders once received by TOS had a less than 1 second transaction time, but the network delay was horrible.

It's possible that as everyone "tuned in" to their trading platforms or websites, the performance degraded greatly.

E*Trade was the most responsive and allowed me to do realtime quotes (although horrible bid/ask was present).

Fidelity was horrible. Log in took over 2 minutes. Refreshing a position page took over 3 minutes. Submitting an order took over 2 minutes and for the three times I could get to an order page after 3pm EST and hit "Submit" on my order, NOT ONE of the three orders transacted.

Fidelity gets my "Epic Fail" award as a broker. Let me fight the spreads, not your unresponsive website and order processing weakness.

This goes to say that the broker giant Fidelity CANNOT handle the traffic.

Attempting to call Fidelity during "panic" will park you in line behind the thousands of others also calling.