rersonut r uaiwr

MONEY & INVESTING© Copyright 2OQ7Dow Jones ti Company, All Rights R,eserved

* * * * THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Saturday/Sunday, July 28 - 29, 2007

The key to getting your orders intothe system: Know all of the channelsyour brokerage firm offers. For most

GREEN THUMBfirms these days that means online

d-d ti biMs. Dickson eventually cultivated a race- aseve votrading, interact$y Jeff D. Opdyke relationship with another more-respon- ing on the phone, toll-free customer-

increas-- andservice phone numbersAnd Susanne Craig sive broker who worked in the sameoffice as her bro-

,,bigly, access via wireless devices like____________ _____________ -

-* ] ker and shifted BlackBerrys. But each of these may re-

TT/hi-i -c'. her business to quire a password or different phoneand investors need to havenumbersIt' 0 him. The Dicksons

.- also filed an arbi-

•-

,that information at hand.

Ou anIf (7 tration claim,

If you're away from your corn-uter and you can't reach your bro-

-against Morgan pStey, lining ker on the phone, call another

H I' '' ', the firm gave branch in anothercity or state; theyft h he a e Bro r Hc.. to ensure your them fraudulent should be able to assist.

trd gets made: investment ad- You can also protect yourself

HE HARDEST ThVIE to reach ' Be read tovice. A MorganStanley spokes-

'

E'Trade and Morgan Stanley say cli-ents may want to consider setting up

your broker might be whenT alternate 'tradin man says allega- standing stop-loss orders that will au-you need him the most,

Louisiana school bus driver Marthachannel that ourfirr' if

" tions the Dick-y ertomatically implement pre-existingsell orders when a particular price tar

Dickson was returning from her mornrng route on a difficult trading day m

sons couldn tSet up a stop-loss reach their ce-igi get is reached This way even if the

2001 Womed that her and her bus order t-eed of nal broker areb less Somet

market is tanking and you cant getthrough your orders will be executed

band s life savings would be hit shesays she called her Morgan Stanley

aseradetime toutoi'ntically. one was always Joseph C. Peiffer, a New Orleans-

broker several times Instead she says available to iurach in cuss client con-aa

based lawyer who represents customers with complaints against Wall

her calls went right to his assistant Lcerns " Street firms, says it's unusual for in-

who assured her everything was fine. .:At a time vestors to bring a case of negligence

Whether caused by internationalturmoil or a market selloff like hap- when stock prices are sinldng and simply because they couldn't contact

penéd on Thursday and Friday, hives- trading activity surging-and inves-tors are flooding brokerage firms with

a broker on the phone. However,that comp'aint is a familiar refrain

tors can, on occasion, find them-selves unableto trade because on- sell orders-what's an investor to do? with clients who've lost money, and

line electronic systems are over- In an electronic age, orders left, onvoice mail or delivered by email or fax

it's often an element in nlost of thecases he has handled.

loaded, or because their broker issuddenly unreachable by phone would seem to circumvent any poten- "Brokers are always happy to talk

",- - tial roadblock. Only, they don't. Broker- he says.when things are going up,age firms generally won't accept such "But market drops expose otherorders 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 getcheclong such messages on a busy day. on the ph.i when that hapuens."