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Legal: Bank did not follow through with my instructions on what to do with my money?

I went in to see the banker and asked him to take all my money out of my investments and transfer it to my saving. He said yes, he will do it right away. Well they never did, and from what happened with the debt ceiling debates the stock market went down quite a lot. Did the bank break any laws by not listing to my demands with my money? If so, which one(s)? And where can I find out more about them? with this situation we gave them plenty of time, we asked for the money to be taken out in late july, they said it would be done, the next day we left on vacation, when we got back the money hadn't moved despite us telling the banker to move our money, they had plenty of time. Your opinion's are good and thank you, however im not asking for opinions, please just answer the question, is there any law that they broke by not doing that?

Public Comments

1. Generally it depends on who can prove what. Unless you gave him something in writing that said (something like) "sell all of my stock investment before August 5th and transfer the proceeds to my savings account" your arbitration will not go well. In writing -- even an email counts -- is key when it comes to he-said-she-said arguments. If your instructions were not clear and documented, it is a very weak case. You should also run the numbers. The stock market has bounced around a bit, you may not be worse off for not selling during the last week. Then, take your money out of the bank. Regular banks are a very, very expensive place to invest in the stock market. Try Vanguard or Fidelity.
2. Placing an order doesn't guarantee execution of the order in time to prevent an undue loss. It's strictly best effort. You don't just tell your banker to take all your money out of your investments and into savings, you place orders to sell your investments and there would be confirmation that the order was placed and again when the order was executed. It's called personal finance for a reason, it's personal. Sounds like you didn't actually place an order to sell and even if you had, they are not liable for not executing the order in time as it's still best effort. There was plenty of warning with the debt ceiling debates, how is it that you did not confirm whether or not your instructions were followed in time? Either your order was already too late or you were negligent in not following up. Note with investments, you can't demand to sell, you can only ask to sell.
3. If you want something done right, do it yourself. At least you would have no one to blame, but yourself. You should have set up online access to your account, so you could control what happens when. But failing that, as mentioned, you should have done it in writing. It is easy to misinterpret or forget about things done by phone.