Yes, I have had the same problem with Scottrade. MY Level 2 will be going crazy with changes and my chart and watch list will not change for a a good 20 seconds sometimes. Very frustrating! I'm looking to use another broker but not sure which company to use yet.
I used Scottrade for several years. As a day-trader, I had a lot of problems with Scottrade. They have costed me a ton of money. 1) Their website logged me out constantly. I had to log in multiple times during the day. Often when I sensed a good buying opportunity, I would miss it because the website had logged me out. 2) Trading before and after regular market hours is difficult at best. You had to go through some special pages. Their system can only send orders to ISLD. And you cannot trade 15 minutes before and after regular market hours, which is ridiculous. 3) The EliteTrader is somewhat useful for traders, but you can't use it to trade before and after regular market hours. You still have to go through the web site which is slow and tedious. 4) Their commission is not cheap. $7 per ticket plus SEC fee. My order often gets broken up into 2+ trades, due to partial fills. Then the commission can really add up immensely. Overall, they are okay for investors. But they really suck for traders.
I hate to crash on your conspiracy party, but I used to work at Ameritrade and there is no house full of wolves. You open an account, stick your money in, place trades on the internet, pay a commision. Nothing too exciting going on there. They are based in Omaha, Nebraska and have some pretty decent people working there. Not perfect, but I recommend them above others. For me to recommend them is saying something since I am definitley not a "company man", and I was more than happy to quit working there.
I was starting to feel like they had a conspiracy motive to get me, as I do a lot of shorting. Usually not a problem getting the stocks. I know they sell their order flow, which ends up splitting the orders, making a headache for record keeping. Can you tell me what broker you are using now.
I don't use any broker right now. Will probably go with ThinkorSwim because they have futures in addition to stocks. They also have a pretty good looking software interface. I'm using there papermoney simulation right now to test their service. So far the software seems pretty nice. On the other hand if you're forced to trade through their website it's kind of slow..........but, they tell me a new version is coming out soon which will be significantly faster. If you think Ameritrade is bad though, don't use ThinkorSwim. I saw a guy I used to work with on their internet page.
never had those problems and i've been with then for 2 yrs. Sometimes I'd get different quote prices during high volatility, but i guess thats normal. If you get ELITE, you get trade-ideas.com for free which looks nice. cm