A bit like reading your own obituary

The market dropped another 2% or so today, so when I logged in to my Comsec online brokerage account I got a bit of a shock to see "Margin Call" in big, red letters.

Of course, I knew it couldn't really be a margin call (since I use fairly modest gearing levels, and know how far the market would have to drop to get me close to a margin call). But it's still an uncomfortable feeling to see the message plastered accross your account! When I checked on the listing of my portfolio securities it turned out that all the prices were incorrectly listed as $0.00 per share. Apparently yet another glitch in the Comsec system. A couple of weeks ago the entire system was inaccessible for half an hour during a period of peak demand, causing a lot of investor angst. This really isn't good enough for the largest online, discount broker in Australia.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007