I have traded with them for years and had pretty good luck with their software in the past but NOT this year. When you type in a sell order with their streaming quotes if you do not execute soon after you type it in then the sell order can REFRESH and change to a BUY order which is their default. This has happened to me twice now in the last month. The first time I noticed it pretty quickly and actually made money. regardless, I called Scottrade to report the problem and was given the excuse nothing was wrong with their software and I had probably placed the order wrong. The tech person I spoke with was rude and insisted that their software was flawless or thousands of people would be calling to complain otherwise. I was frustrated but I understand that accidents happen and maybe I had placed the order wrong - and no harm was done. The same thing happened to me again last Friday and I am certain it was a sell order instead of a buy. As soon as I noticed that I had actually bought the stock when I typed in a sell order I immediately placed another sell order and the stock did sell the second time around but this time I lost money. The key, I believe, is the time you allow a sell order to set in the window before you trigger the sell of the stock. If you do make the mistake of trading with them, I would not recommend leaving a sell order up for more than 20 seconds before you execute the trade or you may in fact be BUYING MORE stock like what happened to me INSTEAD OF SELLING. I called them again today to make them aware of the problem and exactly how it was happening. The manager I spoke with was very polite but he just gave me an apology and said he would file a complaint. He agreed that the software could possibly refresh and default to a buy because that is their default but did nothing to compensate me for my loss. I have also had bad luck with their "gains keeper" which is about as inaccurate as can be. I have recently had bad luck with their order confirmations when placing any type of order. Everything from buying, selling, shorting, and covering short positions are often inaccurate and cancelation of orders are very hit or miss. This seems particularly off when shorting and covering short positions. I saw another poster here that has had that same problem and I truly feel for them because the mistakes can be very costly. I was a champion for them in the past but I would never recommend them in the future. If just one person is made aware of these problems and decides to trade elsewhere it is well worth my time writing this post. I'm moving to a different broker!!! Lesson Learned!! I would love to know if you have had problems and or positive things to say about their software.
I once called to rant and rave because I thought that they had cancelled a stop order I had in without my consent. I ripped the branch manager a new one because he told me that I cancelled it on my own. I later found out that I did indeed cancel it because I wasn't using the streaming quotes correctly. I wanted to cancel an order to buy more stock and I didn't notice that when I cancelled it I cancelled all orders, including the stop I had to protect my original order. I've never had a problem with GainsKeepper either. I'm not sure how you are using the streaming quotes when you say you type "sell". I have all stocks that I'm watching up on the screen and if I see what I like, I simply click "buy" or "sell" right next to the ticker symbol., nothing to type but the quantity.
Their Gainskeeper shows that I still have shares of BIDU that I haven't held for months. I am on a Mac and I don't know if that creates any problems but they show that I took a loss for 2005 where I had a gain for the year and they show I had a gain for 2006 where I had a loss. So far this year's records seem accurate. When I said type in a sell order I mean you can scroll to select buy or sell. I didn't want to say "place" a sell order because that would have confused the issue. Should have probably said select sell order.
Agree about Scottrade, their service has done a cliffdive recently. Their options trading/capabilities are just plain awful. I recently opened an Options Xpress account to move my options trading there, and the difference is like night and day. First off, Scottrade simply doesn't allow you to trade spreads! There are only 2 risk levels to them, selling covered calls, and buying calls/puts. That's it! You can't enter into a spread order, in fact that won't allow you to short any option, regardless of your experience, account size, etc. I don't know if this is a newer policy or what, but I was flabbergasted when I called the other day to sell some upside calls in an equal ratio against some deep itm calls that I own. "Oh we don't handle spreads, we're looking into doing it in the future though." The future? The future is now, how can they be behind the curve so badly! Never trade options through Scottrade, even if you are saving money.
I was puzzled by that too ..... Can't write options? I thought it was some kind of mistake, but they don't allow it. Scottrade is NOT for options traders.
They simply don't understand, and don't WANT to understand the risks that come along with options. Then instead of just saying "well that's our policy I'm sorry" instead they have the branch managers make up reasons for why you can't do certain things. I am long 2 deep itm calls, and wanted to sell 2 atm calls against it and the guy took me through a long explanation on how the risk is "undefined" and "we treat this as an unsecured position because those 2 calls that you are long arent securing the 2 short calls, its not like you own 200 shares of stock." They plainly just make s-- up. How is the risk undefined?? Brutal, like you said...NOT for options traders, plain and simple. And if you write options against a stock position (covered write), you have to first close out the call position before you do anything with the stock. Try selling the stock first and you'll get error messages until your face turns blue. It's just brutal.