I saw that an "Ignored Memember" posted a message in my thread. I checked in inkognito mode and saw that they are again @maxinger and @eastern_warrior... Some jobless trolls, which i blocked for a reason before. After i nailed their troll posts before, they are attacking personally like a mad dog in my every single thread, how desperate, lol. I suggest you to block them either, since their posts are not to help someone and just provocative purposes.
To be honest I think all Brokers have Pros and Cons. I started off with TD Ameritrade and it within a week of my first trade, using them cost me $1500 because their software couldn't keep up with the load at market open. I placed a Market Order to buy at market open, the order didn't appear to fill so I cancelled it. Then 5 minutes later I got a fill notification. By the time I figured out what had happened, I was down $1500. When I checked out the logs, it showed that despite no notification of fill and despite cancelling the order on the UI, the order actually filled within seconds of market open. I then moved to TradeStation and my very first order did the same thing, only worse because I didn't even know my order was filled to the next day. Luckily that one didn't cost me any thing because it was a sim account. Now I am with IB and have to say that TWS is 1000x better than ToS or TradeStation. ToS doesn't have the basic tool required to actively daytrade and TradeStations software is just old, unwieldy and unintuitive. That is not to say TWS isn't without its issues, I mean I can't even hotkey the ability to sell off my or portion of my position by a percent, i.e. scale out by selling 1/2 or 1/4 with a single button. Not sure how a broker with a reputation for being Day Trader Friendly, got that rep with the ability to use these hotkeys but when you look at ToS hotkey options, your in Nirvana with TWS. I also like the Chart Trader functions alot. Finally, if you can't stand TWS, you can go with DAS Trader Pro. I have to admit though, Lightspeed trading seems like it might be a better broker, at least in the US. It is just a bit more expensive.
Since people are paranoid and probably gonna think that i am promoting something else but small brokers have better and more competent service generally. I liked the light speed just because of the @Robert Morse He answered my questions detailed and very competently even in Sunday... Maybe boutuqie brokers cost little bit more but quality should have a price anways... In long term i am pretty sure that you are gonna win more. A friend of me was customer on Robinhood and RH was down like 1-2 days long and he could not close his positions and lost roughly 20k dollars. So, i don‘t really mind the costs anymore.
I can relate to this. I also just decided to leave them. Their extremely poor customer service did it for me. In February they auto-liquidated almost my whole account because one of my put credit spreads got in the money on expiration day. I described my case earlier in this post. Although the liquidation of the spread itself was justified, they only closed the long protective leg and let the short leg continue to run against me. They transformed my defined risk credit spread in a naked put, increasing my losses. As my net liq got negative $400k due to this, it triggered all sorts of other algo's closing all my positions apart from the naked put creating the issue. As the initial spread had a defined risk, there could not have gone much wrong other than I would have lost the value of the spread itself, which would have been fine. I filed a complaint for it, but the way this was treated was absurd: - It took on average 6 to 8 weeks before they got back to one of my emails. Between mid-February and today they send 3 responses. My answer to their email constantly followed the same day they wrote me - Today I tried to call them, but I don't even get through their waiting line. The queue is huge and several times they simply disconnected me after waiting for 1 to 1.5 hours. I've spend about 3 to 4 hours holding the line without even talking to someone - The responses I received via email were all standard basic text, never answering any of my questions or dealing with my issue. I had the idea I was mailing with an intern that does not even know what an option is. Emails finish by saying it's the final decision, without even commenting on the real issue. What can I do about it? How can a company of this size treat its customers like this? In my view they clearly made a mistake, but they do everything to avoid dealing with it. Will advise everybody to stay away from this company.
Been with IB for several years, trading strictly using Algos, intraday using US based server routed to IB US based servers using IB Gateway, managing algos with Multicharts... markets are major futures and us equities... i have never had any issues, never slow response, support very good on chat or phone... to be honest it worked perfectly even before i switched IB servers to US from Swiss, only downside is the need to restart gateway every sunday, but not a big issue... anyway... try to find a better broker and api for retail intraday trading... i think it will be hard.. not associated with IB... just a happy client