what to do about dishonest broking?, page-11

Hi flamecojazz,

Yes, one must be very careful with ensuring that you always check every trade/transaction that goes thru.
Take an instance recently I had when dealing in CFD's on Macquarie Group Shares ( MQG ) on the 7th March in which I had a short position open.

I barely had my order in for an hour when i was apparently stopped out at 12:20pm at $26.62 and $26.65 on 200 shares.

I couldnt believe that I could have been stopped out this quickly especially when i had a stop loss approx 4% above the mornings VWAP ( volume weighted average price ).

If anyone wants to see the 200 shares in MQG sold on market just check the market depth on the 7th March this year at the times posted below and u will see the "anomoly" in regards to the cross trade

Then i checked the market depth and this is how it went :

12:20pm $25.72
12:20pm $25.73
12:20pm $26.625 * my shares being sold via a XT
12:20pm $25.72
12:20pm $25.72
12:20pm $26.655 * second tranch of my shares sold via XT
12:20pm $25.72

I rang up company XXX to find out why they had sold ( bought in this case on a short ) my shares on a cross trade nearly one dollar above market depth price.

After dealing with a rep for 10 mins trying to explain ( yes the rep who i dealt with could NOT see a problem with this trade... he kept reiterating that all the broker has done was sold into the market depth and this is the price i received.)

I truly dont beleive the rep even looked at the information on screen to validate my concerns because it was so obvious it was laughable but he put seemed intent on giving me his robotic voice and reiterating the fact that this was a normal trade.

I escalated the case immediately to a manager who advised within seconds that there is definitely an error and will be rectified ASAP.

I think the manager was under the impression that finding a solution would be the end of this problem but I had quite a few question I needed answers to :

I asked the manager how this could possibly occur and do they actually have safeguards to prevent this?

His answer sounded a little automated ( like he was reading from a book ) by saying that they have some of the highest safeguards in the industry and this most assuredly wont happen again.

I asked for clarification of this... I asked surely there must be multiple confirmations that comes up on screen before allowing a broker to trade shares outside of the current market price via a cross trade... he confirmed there was.

My next question was that if the above was true then the broker dealing with my trade was either completely blind, incompetent or both...either that or he intentionally sold my shares with a cross trade at this price for monetary gain for himself, the company or another person...

The manager didnt want to continue conversation about what I just advised but tried to press on what he states is the "most important" part of this conversation which is that it has been rectified and all monies paid back in full...

Anyway... didnt really get a satisfactory answer but did all the trade and money sorted... although I now triple check and tell everyone I know to check every trade and corresponding market depth in detail to ensure that the trade has gone thru correctly.