I'll pay a higher transaction fee for the safety and security of my funds. Besides if you do enough business and have a significant amount with a firm like TD Ameritrade, you can negotiate those fees down. Some of these smaller firms are very vulnerable, can be here today and gone tomorrow. No way am I going to place funds with them. I've seen too many come and go over the past 35 years.
I've extensively used Schwab's "Streetsmart Edge" in the past, and (to me) it was awful. I loaded it up today just to see what (if anything) has changed. Looked like the same old awkward program. In contrast, ToS is a pleasure to use. Can be a bit heavy on resources, but I've had no issues. Runs equally well on Windows and Mac. I've tried charting with several other programs, and always come back to ToS. Whether or not it would survive a Schwab buyout is of course all speculation at this point, but I sure hope so.
You can always do your stock trading at Lehman Brothers. Do your banking at Wachovia or a savings and loan. I know it's your livelihood (serious day trading), but IB, Robinhood, and other brokers are still around. But, if something like 2007-2009 happened again, I would sleep well with my accounts at Schwab and Fidelity. Just me...
I will give one warning for TD Ameritrade customers. If this buyout goes though, watch your float, money market, bank, liquid funds. This is where Schwab makes most of their money. True story...I had $15,000. sitting in a Schwab Bank savings account. Schwab will fight you to get it into a money market fund. Big accounts, they will work with you. Small accounts...Play by their rules (think B of A or Wells Fargo). I didn't want to invest this money at the time...Market was hitting new highs. So I put it into a CD for say 6-9 months. It earned the going rate of interest at that time. But the catch was the CD didn't start earning interest for about 7-10 days. If you look at their CD options you will know what I'm talking about. When the CD matured, it took a couple of days for the money to show up in my saving account (which was and is earning diddley squat). It may be a couple more days before these funds ($15,000. + interest) could be reinvested into a stock, bond, or another CD. They earn tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of dollars from this. Yeah, they will make their money from the market makers...But this is a great source of their income. Also I see these moves and profit from it by owning some Schwab stock...
Regarding Schwab, aren't they rather conservative in their policy? I've always enjoyed TD and TOS for their accomodative policy. BTW will TOS be spared from the merger? What features will likely get axed if the merger goes through?
You could do that with TDA, but I haven’t had much luck with Schwab and with their non-transactional business model, they just not care that you trade a lot.