Just start to check out this week, since the commission is $10.99 per order. I also have Real Tick which much more expensive, but has multi time frame real time charts. Any one use the Datek Direct? Where do you get the real time charts?
I was with both Ameritrade and Datek and they stink. I lost thousands on poor fills, system crashes and unfilled phone orders. Really poor service and customer service is a joke. Do yourself a favor and avoid them! I use TradeStation and IB now. Great service and fast fills.
Im sorry but I must disagree with some of the points being made here. You say you get lousy fills??? Why are u using market orders???? I have been using Datek Direct for 2 years and must say that for 10.99 a trade it is well worth it. My orders go through usually in 1 sec. sometimes quicker, sometimes a little slower, but most of the time they are pretty fast. I trade every day and it is fairly consistent. I trade large positions in cheap stocks so it works out well. Though there is a down side to this. Customers service is more than a joke, its a nightmare. The people answering the phones know nothing about anything. And there are times, at least once every couple of months where you cant get on the system. Ive got off pretty easy for the past 2 years when dealing with these mishaps until about 3 weeks ago. I bought off of an ARCA on the offer and Datek actually lost my order. They actually lost thousands of orders that day. any way for the next 45 min. i sat on hold waiting for someone to answer the phone. I did not know if the order went through or not, but either way my account was frozen. I could do nothing. When I finally got through to the trading desk, (I almost smashed my monitor out of frustration while I waited on the phone watching the stock I was attempting to buy rip up .20 (remember penny stock + large position) The guy on the phone was an idiot and it took great restraint not to curse him. He said "well we don't know what happened, if you bought it or not, and kept offering to place an order for me at that time, even though I explained 10 times that my account was frozen. All I could do was sit and wait. It turned out the order never went through, and the whole ordeal cost me $800 in profits. So you decide what to do. They are good the majority of the time, but you never know when disaster is lurking around the corner. But I guess thats a risk with any system. And even though this is a horror story, I do think there good for trading size. commissions cant be beat.
You can use QuoteTracker (free, or 7$/month without ads)interfacing it to Datek or Ameritrade datafeed.
I have paid $60/yr for QuoteTracker & use their 3 min rt charts ( I have at least 12 different stocks & index charts open to gauge the market direction). Am looking for the multi-tab rt charts (monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 30 min, 15 min, 5 min & 2 min) like Real Tick.
I always use limit orders.....I can't tell you how many times I got small amounts filled out of large orders and lost money because I scalp and did not break even on the 30 shares out of 2,000 that I got. I like the charts I get from Trade Station.....but will admit if you like penny stocks the commissions can get expensive. I trade SPY and QQQ which it works out well for.
bobcathy1..... couldnt tell from the post..... for trading qqq 1000-3000 shares with limit orders... you happy with them or not ??? thanks in advance
The decent ticket prices aren't worth the hassle. 1. Customer service sucks. 2. It's a web based platform. Sometimes wierd things happen and getting on or getting a good refresh is problematic. 3. The layout sucks. Too much time spent flipping between screens. The screens are web based and need a moment to load. Far too much wasted time. You can get far more for approx. the same charges at many other firms. Stay away! I only wish I'd known better before I wasted years there.