E-Trade platform?

I can`t seem to view how many shares I have to trade when I select trade.
I have to go to my account to view the amount I hold, then write the amount down on a piece of paper and go back to sell and enter the symbol and amount.

Is there a way that I can have this done automatically when I want to sell something? How am I supposed to keep track of share holdings in my head?

p.s. sorry to the owner of the acount I got into via an E-Trade malfunction, your balance was similar to mine. I didn`t realise it was not my account until I started playing around with it. Sorry Mr & Mrs Munro if you subscribe to this site.

the way you describe is how ive always had to do it... mind you ive never looked for a different way. never consciously realised how stupid it is...

After hours I tried to cancel an order but could not because only ONE amendment can be made to existing orders.I subsequently bought stock at a higher price than I wanted.

They told me I should have rang up to cancel and I told them I am a worker.

What do other persons think of this system of after hours orders and amendments?

Yes, amending orders is a major pain in ETrade. Unless you buy at market to get the whole order through in one go, you get left with part of your order unsold, then you can't amend it. ETrade won't let you change the price of the trade.

If you're left with these shares, you have to cancel the order and sell the leftovers (paying another minimum $33 brokrage)

ETrade must make a fair bit in extra brokerage from all these quirks, because to have this kind of inflexibility as part of its supposedly better offering sucks.

One other gripe is the amount of time for the 'handsfree' refreshes to update watchlist price displays. The horizontal progress bar is pretty annoying because of its slowness.

I've never thought of the no. of shares not being shown as a problem, but now that it has been pointed out I agree it would be an improvement to have it shown on the Trade screen.

I don't do that much trading but can see it would be irritating if you did a lot.

However, I can't really see that partial filling of an order should be a problem.
You only pay the one lot of brokerage. I had an order partly filled today for an order I've had sitting in the market for weeks waiting for the price to drop.
And the remainder can continue to sit there until it fills.

Julia

With both NAB and HSBC, when selecting the Sell option, your current holdings are displayed and you select the one you want to sell. The sell order screen then defaults to your total holding of that stock, but can be amended if desired.

A much better method than simply typing in the number yourself.

GP