Though I have traded with CT for over a year, I have kept my account with Schwab SSP because the research tools are very good. I recently moved some funds back into Schwab so I could check out how well their latest version of SSP compared to CTPro. Without going into a long drawn out disparaging rant, I want to share with you what I have learned and ask for some feedback from you so that we can forward a link to this thread to the correct persons at Schwab. Here are my issues, in order of importance with explanations of why. 1.Extended Hours Black-Out Period ( When missed/blow-out earnings come out at 4:01PM and you need to exit, you stand the chance of losing thousands of dollars within seconds if you can't sell or buy to cover on your position. it happened to me more than once, but never with CT) 2. Cancel Order Button (Having no cancel order button in the level II window means sifting through the account detail window for the correct order you want to cancel, then right clicking on it and selecting to cancel or change the order. If your order was a mistake, or something has changed you won't have enough time to cancel it in SSP) 3. Average Cost Information (In CT Pro your position cost and quantity of shares are displayed in the level II window so you know where you are in a trade, in SS Pro only the quantity of shares in your position are displayed. For someone trading multiple positions it's a must to see your position cost basis at all times) 4.No Shortable Info Before Entering An Order ( In CT Pro the shortable share numbers are displayed in the level II window so you know how many shares are available to short before you enter a short position, however in SS Pro you have no clue as to if shorts are available or how many, so if you need to average in and nothing is available you are left out of potential profits or taking a loss should the security only move partially in your favor) 5. Net Worth & net Worth Change , Day Trade BP Information (In SS Pro the net worth and other position information is updated in the server only every 15 minutes, so it is possible that you may have a bad calculation and exceed DTBP resulting in a regulation T call, or in some cases traders make decisions by watching their actual profits or losses in real time, not with SS Pro you won't) 6. Smartex Execution Time vs CyberXchange vs ECN's (CyberXchange is very fast, and I use it more often than routing myself, but Smartex is like watching gras grow, nothing beats the speed of ARCA which you can route only for buy orders in SS Pro, you must use Smartex to short and you will not get the fill you want ) 7. Number Of Charts and Trading Windows ( With CT pro I use 4 monitors and they are filled with charts and trading windows, I think I have had at least 15 charts up at once. In SS Pro you get 6 charts and 3 trading windows max) 8. CME Futures (I don't trade the futures, but watching the e-mini futures gives you a depth into what professional money is doing before indices follow along. SS Pro will not have them, I will not have that edge) These are all pretty big concerns, but if you would kindly respond with your own list we can possibly get some attention.
1. You have to use ENC's for SmarteX will not execute your order intil 4:15 EST. 2.This is supposed to be fixed on the transfer date. The new plaform won't be released until 1 week before the Cyber transfer. 3. Supposed to be fixed upon transfer. 4. Short shares will not be shown. 5. Supposed to be fixed. 6. Welcome to suck ass non direct access trading. 7. This is supposed to be fixed to the equivilent of CYber upon the transfer. 8. Futures data will be offered like on Cyber, but trading them will no longer be offered. My suggestion find another broker for executions are not going to be anything like the Cyber experience.
Good luck getting Schwab to pay attention to your concerns. We have been complaining about this for months in another thread. They had a Cyber rep who posted there once in a great while, but he seems to have left for good, along with the advertising. It makes me wild with anger when I get these endless emails and mailings from Schwab touting the transition and the great new features like mututal funds and......drum roll, bracket orders. I would say they are clueless, but we know that the Cyber people understand all these concerns and agree with us that the new platform will not be up to par.