John Raaf

I've been using CMEG since I started trading live (2022) and I never traded after the market closed, but, recently, I took a trade at 4:39 PM to see if I could take advantage of the big spike of LYFT. I wasn't able to get in early, so I was chasing it a bit, but it was moving up so quickly, I felt I need to make a go of it. I only took 30 shares -- it was basically a test that, I thought, would not give me a lot of profit or a big loss. I was able to get into the trade easily enough with a MARKET order, but when I tried to sell, DAS wouldn't let me do it. I tried a LIMIT order, then a MARKET order -- several times! I began to panic because the trade that was going in my favor was now changing direction and, all of a sudden, I was down a couple of hundred dollars! I even re-started DAS. I just couldn't get out of the trade! Panic set in. I knew that, if I contacted CMEG by email, they wouldn't get back to me quickly enough. They're not known for fast support. So, I surrendered and accepted the fact that I'd have to wait until the market opened the next morning. I could only hope that I wouldn't get killed. As a side note, the trade became more complicated because a rare situation happened. LYFT apparently miss-reported their earnings (they originally posted a 500 basis points, but someone realized that an extra zero was added by mistake. It was supposed to be 50!) That error caused the stock to soar and then drop precipitously! It wasn't looking good. I was happy to see that the stock made a small gain and that I was only down $150 the next morning. And, CMEG responded to my email. As it turns out, in order to complete the trade after hours, I needed to change the route from MARKET to CMPPST. This is something specific to CMEG, folks. Now, I haven't tested that route, but based on the email, that's the way to make the trade after 4 pm ET. I ended up selling right after the market opened and took a $142.50 loss. As it turned out, if I had held a bit longer, I could have made up another $60/$70, but, honestly, I am okay with the loss. It could have been a lot worse!