FWIW, I currently use both IB and Ameritrade. I am planning on moving everything over to IB. Main reason is margin. Next reason is the ability to trade different instruments with the same account. I will keep a couple bucks in my TOS account just to use their platform. (I use thinkscripts) and will do my trading with IB. Until I find a better solution....
I can save them a lot of trouble. Just bring back the old CyberTrader platform. Offer competitive commissions and you'd bring back a lot of old customers too.
I'll add that if you want active traders migrating back to Schwab, you have to introduce aggresive pricing à la per share commisions and reduce margin requirements to 25% on Longs from the current 30% and emulate other mainstream brokers on ETF margins. The old CT platform was head and shoulders above its competition at that time and as was suggested above, reinstating it in its entirety wouldn't be such a bad idea.
Schwab's SSPro platform is great for moderately active traders - I used it almost daily from 2001-2008. And customer service was great - generally answer within 30 seconds. and the first person you reached could handle virtually every issue. For daytraders, there was just one issue: sometimes they held orders for manual approval, so orders could be delayed for 2 or 3 minutes. And if it's a market order, it could not be canceled during that time. Customer service could not tell me the algorithm used to kick the orders to them for approval, but in general I found it occurred when I was above my overnight buying power (but still below my daytrading buying power).
Given my experience over the past 6 months, I would agree with the quote above. Those that have bitched and moaned about the old CyberTrader platform at Schwab clearly have not been on the Street Smart Pro platform in the past year. As for a set rate on commissions, it doesn't take a math genius to figure out that trading 2,000 shares for $8.00 comes to a pretty competitive per share rate. And for West Coast remote traders... feel free to do a trace-route to your data/execution server back East and let me know if it gets close to the 35ms latency that one gets when they connect to Schwab's servers in Phoenix. My guess is that you are up around 95ms, with a hop or two often exceeding triple digits. Street Smart Pro offers direct access via ARCA and NASDAQ, the ability to trade up to 25,000 shares after hours, and is totally FREE with an account size over $1 million, or to those that trade more than 48 times per quarter. I was on the platform during the "Flash Crash" and it did not "freeze" or slow up. It's definitely worth a look for those that are tired of the slow Ameritrade feed and the BS that comes from other brokers/platforms. I've been on a number of remote platforms over the last 10 years... everything from Realtick to E-Signal to Quotetracker/AMTD to Assent's Anvil and Hammer daytrading platforms. Schwab's Streetsmart Pro platform is pretty darn impressive, especially for a West Coast based trader. Good Luck to All in 2011
This. And if you are trading only limit orders your cost will be a small fraction of the 5$/1000shrs.
Forgive me for being daft, but doesn't any interaction with Schwab have to eventually communicate with the East Coast (for quote data and for submitting orders)? So isn't low latency in this scenario just an illusion? Does Schwab have algorithmic trading or something such that 60ms makes a difference to you?