I've been having problems, too. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=121093 Today I couldn't exit a position in UAUA. I had like 3 pending sell market orders with an orange status! I had to call the trading desk. Luckily, the stock was moving in my direction as I waited for someone to pick up the phone. As I was waiting, TWS flashed the red message bar. The message said they knew about the lag in order execution and were working on it. The system came back up while I was on the phone with him and I closed the trade on my own, so i didn't get charged the $30 fee. Anyway, I'm half nervous to trade now. :eek:
For low commission stock trading, the best deal is in some of those prop firms if you do small lots (below 1000 shares). For entry level traders, the rate may be .004, but for high volume traders, the rate can be as low as .002, or even lower. Tricky thing is you either need Series 7 or run the risk of being shut down by SEC. But if you trade large lots (over 2000 shares), you may use fixed rate brokers such as Scottrade ($7). For example, you buy 10,000 shares of BSC, it only costs you 7 dollars, at IB it costs you 50 dollars, a round trip costs you 100 dollars.
I'm in the same situation where at this point I'm nervous to send any significant trades with these delays especially with the quick swings in this market. I know they sent a bulliten today that they were having problems but I've been noticing this since last wednesday or thursday. If they cannot fix this then I will definitely need to move to a new broker as my trading strategies are going to miserably fail if I have execution delays like this. I've currently been researching ThinkorSwim and Optionsexpress, TOS seems like it's better but I've never used it for live trading....
I have been with IB for 10 years and they have never picked up the phone. That is why their rates are so low. I still have an account with them but if you want better service stop being cheap and find a new broker.
Yes, I'm coming across the blue status bar more frequently lately. One trade in particular, about a week ago took maybe 3-4 minutes to execute. Since it was Amex, I figured it was probably Guido and his cousin tryin' to make their usual living so I let it go. But have *definetely* seen many times lately the blue status bar show up and orders taking 5-10 sec to execute and this *rarely* happened prior to last couple of months.