I have had a Scottrade account for a year and a half and I consider myself at the end of the learning curve. I know the learning curve never ends but what I mean is, I am at the stage where I finally realize it is more important to focus on limiting losses than it is to build profits. With the former comes the later. So now that I am consistantly profitable with smaller losses and larger profits I take my trading much more seriously and I find myself screaming at Scottrade Elite when it takes 20 seconds for a chart to pop up or when they go down all together for no reason. I have had many orders get stuck in the system only to getted slipped when I finally get a fill. I read the review section about Scottrade and I agree with the reviews....it's good for the swing trades I have been doing but not so good now that I am doing more daytrades. So I ask, If not Scottrade, who? I know a lot of you guys are into IB. I am not looking for any automatic systems. I prefer to trade manually, (ie; Tony Oz in The Stock Trader) but I need to know the most reliable discount broker out there. Ameritrade? E-Trade? or just stick with Scottrade? Thanks!
I'm not sure how big of a lot size you're trading but IB has .005 per share... and you can still manually enter trades.
I started out years ago at Scottrade and still use Scottrade Elite everyday (I really like Scottrade Elite and haven't really had too many technical problems...but I don't trade through it either, mainly use for charting). As far as commissions go, IB has just about everyone beat. I made the switch and haven't looked back. It may take some time to get used to the platform, but the savings are worth the effort. IB lets you get as fancy and personalized as you like, or you can just go plain vanilla if you like. Worth checking them out. I suggest you read reviews about each broker here, pretty extensive. I also found that there was no hassle with the transfer of my account to IB from Scottrade. There are many brokers out there and I have found that it is as much personal preference as anything else, but as far as costs go, IB is hard to beat. When I finally got to the account size I wanted and was using extensive margin, Scottrade was just unacceptable. But like I've said, I still have some accounts at Scottrade, the ones that I don't do active trading in or carry margin. It's all about personal preference in the end I suppose.
Any opinions on Fidelity? Their platform looked decent at the NYC Traders Expo and includes WealthLab, but I haven't seen any reviews here.
Genesis Securities.... Funny how everyone sticks to the "big boys" and gets screwed on support, and you can't negotiate with Interactive brokers for your own specific needs, they won't have any of that. *Although MB seems like a good alternative, did seem like they have good support* Genesis is the way to go if you are serious, as I'm already with them and love everything, it's like paradise.
I can say Ib best broker I have ever used. Highly recommended. (in past years i had accts at quick&reilly, waterhouse, brown, my track,scottrade, livetrade, mbtrading) so I speak from experience and like IB best.
So far so good. Their active trader platform is excellent and they have a dedicated and responsive support staff. Not the absolute cheapest in the industry, and maybe not for the very high volume trader, but worth looking at for the active retail trader.