Ameritrade executions are good. Ameritrade touts Streamer; But, Streamer is so slow to update quotes that it is rendered as useless. For me, Ameritrade is OK to place an order provided I have access to quotes from a source other than Ameritrade.
The Streamer controls and functions are self explanatory. This is the place to keep an eye on your favorite stocks and ETFs. I use HIGH LOW LAST VOLUME PREV CLOSE %CHANGE TRADE TREND QUOTE TREND. Of these I find % CHANGE and NET CHANGE to be the most useful at quick glance. Now I will discuss my "secret weapon of Streamer." I trade and use as indicators some big Dow components and major ETFs as well as index futures that are in one way or another related to these. It was Livermore who suggested you better know what the major stocks, etc. are doing so: Load up your stocks or ETFs Click on Trade Trend to spawn a mini chart Then click on Extended. YOU MUST DO THIS BEFORE MARKET OPEN to capture a whole day's action. In my case, I now have 9 mini charts on 1 17" screen of MMM UTX C IBM CAT WMT SMH INTC and MSFT. I have watched these or suitable predecessors (the Dow is price weighted) for years. Watching these, I now have a convenient graphical depiction of the important activity in my markets as the day unfolds. New highs and lows; important bottoms; whether the trend is up, down or sideways; and possibly the presence and impact of programs is shown. If I see six important Dow components going up and I'm trading in its futures contract (YM), they can sell that contract until the cows come home and my position isn't going down. As important, these charts collectively act as an early warning system for me of news based trouble or opportunity. Finally, with these Trade Trend mini charts, I never go to the Big Charts features for 2D, 10D, etc. because they spawn big cumbersome charts that you already have seen if you do this day in - day out. Also, I have no idea what in hell they show if you do not click on Extended. To me those depictions of movement of bid and ask were out of a video game. I recently watched along as Nitro traded a stock and I had no idea what I was looking at or even where the trades took place. Your experience may be different and comments are welcome. Geo.
This is funny. Just recently I couldn't figure out what everyone was chatting about re: markets selling down. Looked like a super quiet day to me - Dow barely moving as far as I could see glancing up quickly at the little market box at upper right. And of course the nine little charts I shot my mouth off above had stopped too.... - about 45 minutes before... Geo.
News is a mixed bag. Ameritrade provides press releases and DJ newswires, but not the full Comtex feed. You can only get news for the current day. You can provide lists of tickers for which you want to see relevant news, and assign a color to each list so that if you want to view a montage of headlines you can pick out the ones that are in a particular list. Individual articles are displayed in a normal web browser, so you can save them to disk. Another feature I like, and I wish it could be integrated into Streamer, is the real-time market screener. This is currently browser-based. It lets you find, say, all stocks > $10 that have gone down by 1% in the last 5 minutes.
I have been using Freetrade to swing trade equities for the last three months. Everything is electronic (trading, confirms, statements, deposits and disbursements). You never talk to a real person, only email. First 20 trades per month are no commission, then I think it is a buck a trade after that. You have to pay 9.99/month for streamer and there is an additional charge for Level II and newswires. For the type of trading I do (7 to 10 roundtrips per month), it is perfect. Anyone else use it?
Before going on to Datek Charts, we review an important tool of simple technical analysis. The well known US based trader Victor Sperandeo discussed how to correctly draw a trendline in his Trader Vic books written in the late 80s - early 90s. 1. Select the period of consideration: the long term (months to years), the intermediate term (weeks to months), or the short term (days to weeks). 2. For an uptrend within the period of consideration, draw a line from the lowest low, up to the highest minor low point PRECEDING THE HIGHEST HIGH such that the line DOES NOT PASS THROUGH PRICES IN BETWEEN THE TWO LOW POINTS. Extend the line upward past the highest high point. 3. For a downtrend within the period of consideration, draw a line from the highest high point to the lowest minor high point PRECEDING THE LOWEST LOW such that the line DOES NOT PASS THROUGH PRICES IN BETWEEN THE TWO HIGH POINTS. Extend the line downward past the lowest high point. Suggestions for the first time: Print off some Yahoo or whatever charts for one of the big indexes â perhaps a 5 Day, 3 Month and 1 or more years. I suggest you use a line chart for convenience. In the Uptrend (2 above) you have your ruler BELOW the chart line â you are drawing below the action. In the Downtrend (3 above) you have your ruler ABOVE the chart line â you are drawing above the action. Simply reread the section above word for word and you will have it in no time. Geo.
I use it for a year now (in addition to MB) I love the low commisions, (especially for lower priced stocks, do not have to pay the per share fee) I do about 30 trades per day, so after about a week I only pay $1 per trade. Nothing beats it.. but, the fills aren't that good...
Maybe I'll wait on going over changes in trend in favor of looking at the real thing because it may be happening this week in the very short time frame. Open Resources Streamer Chart Pick either DIA (the dow ETF) or SPY (the S & P ETF) 5 day time peiod Extended hours Line style I just leave it on 1 Minute Hit Go Pretend it's yesterday and the day before. You should see how clearly the downtrend appears and then yesterday (right about noon) price break back up through that downtrend line Now see the 2 highs on Wed, the1 high on Thurs and the high here today just after the employment report. You could draw a horizontal line right across them thay are so clear. It's that line we are trying to get through today imo. Geo.
Some more on the charts. The 5 day chart helps to visualize important resistance and support levels as the trading week unfurls. The charts are available when markets are closed. Though futures aren't available from Datek, I also use the charts to trade those in many markets worldwide although I need IB to get the actual price feeds and do the trade. Here is a list of ETFs: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/cgi-bin/etf_dynamic_listing.pl Here is a list of ADRs: http://www.adrbny.com/ You can create proxies for or examine the action in key components of world markets with these. Yahoo also has a feature on ETFs. Several of the big US indexes traded down near their 50 week moving averages last week. I can't get that feature of Datek charts to work right and use other charts outside of the trading day for that type of information as well as the bigger picture on larger time scales. I dont use any of the lower indicators. Maybe someone has one of those that is useful. When the action gets unusually volatile I sometimes switch to the 1 day chart. A useful feature here is the box for Yesterday's Close. One final thing on the charts is when sideways action prevails. Because you can see the channels that your stock is trading in you have some guidance as to where to buy and sell and ride that movement. Some questions were asked on Datek executions. I can't comment on that because it is my backup broker. One thing I do use it for is the occasional microcap, pink sheet or bulletin board trade because of the fixed commission. Also, I learned last week that the new site has expanded the post market trading times up to 8PM I think (may have expanded pre-market also). Geo.