Your editor has been trying to Roth her IRA with E-trade but faces a major problem. US law requires that the taxpayer doing the conversion pay capital gains tax on the non-Roth IRA account when converting it to a Roth. You have two years to pay. And this year, because of the market mess in 2009, you can convert to a Roth without income limits.

So my accountant was keen that I do the switch.

But that requires that E-trade evaluate the non-Roth IRA positions correctly. And they can't. Maddeningly, the price they are showing for one of my positions is not only more than what I paid; the stale price is from before my purchase. That means I would pay capital gains taxes on capital gains not made from my most recent trade.

The stock is an obscure ADR, as you would expect from me, MTDFF, Mutual Fund Public Co. Ltd or MFC of Thailand. This had been a pink sheet ADR, created by Citigroup when they bought a minority percentage in the Thai fund manager. It appealed to my taste from taking US investing vehicles to emerging markets.

Citi has had a few tumbles since then and the appeal of Thailand suffered because of political uncertainties after the overthrow of Thaksin Shinawatra, concern at the King's health, and the polarization of Thai politics.

I first bought it for my IRA in 2005 at 41 cents/sh before I moved to E-trade. My account was then with Morgan Stanley.

My e-trade purchase doubled by holding at 29 cents on April 17, 2009. My average cost was 35 cents. The stock is shown in my IRA as having had its last trade at 41-41.26 US cents on Dec. 28, 2007. That is 12 cents per share more than what I paid 16 months later.

E-trade claim they cannot find a marketmaker now, although they did the trade under a year ago. So I cannot sell the stock to establish its current value. My trade last April does not show up on their books now and they say they cannot any record of how the trade was done or what outside specialist or market-maker was used. They refuse to tell me who does their market-making at all.

In fact, one theory being floated by the E-trade New York Center managing my account is that the broker did the trade in the foreign market as a courtesy to me and then only charged me a discount US commission of the deal.

Frankly, I don't believe this mainly because I could not track or trade the stock after this supposed ?courtesy.'

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