Help. I need a new broker! I have an account with Interactive Brokers and am completely satisfied with it, except that I can't access it from work. Any attempt to bypass firewall security would end my 25 year career. It's the broker that I access over the Internet during the day that I need to replace. I have accounts with Fidelity and TDWaterhouse but don't due much with them due to dissatisfaction with their interfaces. I use to be with Dreyfus Brokerage Services and was completely satisfied with them but was forced onto Brown & Company when Dreyfus was bought out. Brown has cheap commissions and a decent (although a bit slow) interface but after hundreds of trades I am convinced they have terrible executions. Market orders are fine but limit orders are not normally displayed to the market. Rather they are executed only when there are trades through the limit price and I never get price improvement. Would appreciate recommendations for a broker with access via a web browser, reasonable commissions, and most importantly, good/fair executions.
JR, I also was a Dreyfus customer for many years and was always satisfied with them. Many times I got price appreciation. When I thought I got a bad fill they were always reasonable and corrected it form me in my favor. Whenever their system went down I was compensated with a number of free trades. I was even able to negotiate my trading fee down from 15 to 10 dollars a trade. Boy was I disappointed with Brown. Sure they gave me a 5 dollar rate but only on market orders. I never once got price appreciation and I also noticed that my bids and offers weren't displayed. It was very frustrating to say the least. The final straw that broke the camel's back came when I specifically asked a customer rep what my buying power was one morning because I had held some stock overnight and I didn't want to get a margin call. They have no fail-safe on their software to not allow you to go over your buying power unlike Dreyfus. The customer rep gave me a dollar amount I could trade and the next day I get a call from the margin office saying that I had to come up with 16 Thousand dollars before I could trade again because I had gone over my limit. It turns out that the rep gave me the wrong information and the margin compliance officer wouldn't admit any responsibility for their screw up. So instead of keeping their customer that was averaging between 250 and 300 dollars a day in commish (50,000 a year) they forced me to leave. It turns out it was the best ting that ever happened to my trading. I am now with IB and feel that I can be an effective trader and my chances of success are so much more. Good luck to you in your trading. Cocobop
jr, i'm not sure if anything discussed in the following link would violoate your company policy but it might be worth reading through. http://www.interactivebrokers.com/discus/messages/153/460.html?1041637693 the mobile option may be viable and you can get info about that here: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/discus/messages/257/257.html?1042307325
For small amount of shares between 250- 300, MBtrading is the cheapest that I know and I am so happy with them. $3 dollars total for each trade, ecn fees included. level 2, fast report, immediate help. You just could not ask for more. I dont pay the big commission anymore so another 2K-3K go into my pocket each month. happy trading. le140
Check out speedtrader they are reliable with a java based interface that is accessible through the firewall. I think its cool commish may be high but if you are at work it is in range. dow 7000 short with calls for protection you heard it first.