I just made the switch from Ameritrade to IB. Very happy so far and wished I had done it sooner. TOS is decent but being owned by ameritrade is a step down imo.
In my opinion, Schwab's Streetsmart Pro is a much faster platform than anything that Ameritrade has to offer, including the ToS platform. And for people on the West Coast, their servers are located in Arizona. Most helpful in cutting down on latency issues. That having been said, Schwab is coming out with a brand new "in-house" developed platform in Feb. 2011. Stay tuned.
I had hoped someone would chime in with their Schwab comments as i wondered how that might be and i look forward to you updating us about the new version coming out in a couple of months. I'm using AMTD and got grandfathered in from izone at the $5 rate, but i always wondered about Schwab.
I do not respect a trading oriented brokerage that charges obscene margin rates. IB does it right. TDAmeritrade is however a good firm with a good service relative to reasonable expectations. I have used IB for 5 years and have been pleased with the commission rates, service, and product. The handful of times I have called customer service they have been helpful. In general though, I am not a complainer. I expect things not to work on occasion (shyt happens) and I take that into account. Others, who are obstinate and highly demanding or lack proficiency with basic things (like how to read an instruction/tutorial on your own) seem to have a different experience. (Or, perhaps I am just lucky and never had any bad experiences) Their automatic portfolio liquidation on margin calls is an issue, however I fund my account in a way that that is not a problem for me. I will say however it is not a good firm for novice traders. If you have been trading less than 3-5 years it might be a good idea to stick with a firm that offers more handholding. If you like to push the limits with regards to margin usage make sure you fully understand their margin/liquidation policy and how it could impact you.
I used to do a lot of trading with AMTD via the QuoteTracker trading platform. Unfortunately, I spent about a year and a half complaining to upper level management about how ridiculously slow their data-feed was, how completely UNACCEPTABLE it was . . . and (in my humble opinion) all they did was drag their feet and make false promises about how they were upgrading the feed and making this a priority. I had numerous conversations with senior management, but it was a complete waste of time. They would tell me that they were rolling out this and that, and that things were going to get better, and that the streamer feed was being upgraded, but it was just ALL talk. I'm convinced that AMTD won't ever make a their pathetically slow "streamer" feed a priority unless a ton of accounts/assets walk out the door. Besides, given that they now own Think or Swim, I believe that they really couldn't care less about the basic Ameritrade platform/feed or that of QuoteTracker. In my opinion, their new philosophy is that ToS is a super duper platform oriented for TRADERS, and anyone that is an aggressive TRADER needs to be on their ToS platform. That would be great if ToS had a speedy data-feed. Unfortunately, I found that (too) was not the case. When I tested and compared the Ameritrade ToS platform with other feeds in the Spring of this year, I was quite disappointed to see that the ToS platform was running the same kind of pathetically slow "streaming" data feed. When I raised this issue with senior management at ToS (not at AMTD), they made a bunch of "excuses" as to why they "chose to throttle back" the feed ( cause they didn't want to overwhelm the hardware of their customers ). Yeah, like we are all still trading off of a Pentium-3 processor with 1mb of RAM and a dial-up connection. Now I've heard it all. Management at ToS suggested that if I needed REAL-TIME quotes from a much more robust data-feed, I should try their "ThinkPipes" platform which is tailored to market-makers and professionals. Unfortunately, this would require an entirely brand new account since "ThinkPipes" users clear Penson, and not AMTD. A certain amount of capital also had to be in the account ( I believe it was $250k ), and certain volumes traded on a monthly basis as well. Because I would have had to go through the new account documentation (which some firms aren't all that comfortable with given the type of account I'd be setting up), I passed. Like I said, I really liked Jerry Medved's QuoteTracker platform. Jerry was awesome with support and was usually just a quick e-mail or instant message away. He'd even do a "virtual" screen-session with you in order to trouble-shoot or update something. AMTD simply needed to support it with a rock solid, fast, data-feed. They did not. So I left. That having been said, (for awhile), I was able to make QuoteTracker work via AMTD by pumping in a third party Level-1 data feed from DTN. Unfortunately, DTN still does not yet offer Level-2 "Total View" for NYSE and NASDAQ so I finally gave up earlier this year and headed back to Schwab and their Street Smart Pro platform. Funny how DTN claims to be offering data-feeds for professionals, yet they're still in the "Stone Age" when it comes to offering a full-on Level II feed. They say that they will be offering a new data center connection in NJ sometime early next year that will be part of their more expensive NXCore feed, blah, blah, blah... The final nail in the coffin for me was when AMTD terminated their relationship with Jerry Medved on June 1st, and couldn't tell me whether or not they were going to further support and update QT, or whether or not they were going to simply let it twist and die on the vine. As I have previously posted in other threads, I've been pretty happy with Schwab and their feed and the Street Smart Pro platform. It's been very stable and pretty darn speedy when compared to other feeds and I've been able to position trade (and even day-trade) with surprisingly good executions. The Level-2 trading windows can use an upgrade because the upper half of the window is quite cluttered and the font is not adjustable, in contrast to the ECN portion. Unfortunately, Schwab won't be updating SS Pro anytime soon cause all of their energy is going into the new SS Edge platform due out in Q-1 of next year. All I can say is that you do get used to some of the "nuances" of SS Pro. The charts offer decent technical tools and studies, are visually attractive and there's also a decent NEWS window that keeps you updated. You do have the opportunity to direct your order execution via ARCA, NSDQ, and Schwab's own Street Smart order routing ( if you meet the threshold of account size ), which is pretty good. I'm currently running the platform over 4 displays via a Dell Workstation and cable broadband. Again, the fact that their servers are located in Arizona is a huge help to those of us remote traders that are located on the West Coast. I'm also currently Beta testing the new Street Smart "Edge" platform, but it is still in its infancy and has a ways to go, in my opinion. Such is the life of a remote trader. Lots of testing.
AAAintheBeltway - thanks for your feedback, and I'm going to pass on your comment on the Balances tab to the right department. I can tell you that we are very committed to our active trader clients and to making the StreetSmart Edge experience the best that it can be. We hope to get your thoughts on it once it launches in February. --Lindsay Tiles (Schwab Public Relations)
in house developed!? Oh man, good thing they shuttered Cybertrader platform after spending 500 mil on it! LOL these big marketing firms are all the same - clueless.
Re: Ameritrade, I was told that you can just route to ARCA which will route away so shouldn't that resolve the problem of going through their internal book?