Okay, I have heard many rumors that Datek is working on making a new day trading platform for Datek users to compete with Cyber Trader. Does anyone know if this is true or not? My sister has a Datek account. I checked it out the other day and found that Datek offers some some good trading tools. Level I and Level II, many different order routes SOES SNET ECN ISLD, real-time news, very low commissions, and even more. The problem with Datek right now is they try to make it to user friendly. All of their different trading tools run on different web pages. Plus Datek Online Holding Corp. is the parent company of Watcher Technologies. With all that said it seems like if Datek wanted to make a good day trading platform it could do it. So I asked Datek if these rumors were real and if so when is this new trading platform going to be available. Their answer, and I quote "Unfortunately, we do not have exact dates or a time frame of when we will be offering this service." Has anyone else heard these rumors? Does anyone know if they are real?
They will probably offer their users Tradecast, becasue Ameritade bought them, and with AMTD and Datek hooking up, that would make the most sense. Eventually consolidation is going to hit home with regard to trading platforms as well. There are way to many of substandard quality right now. But when a trader gets really comfortable on one it is hard to switch. I remember when I was at one place and they switched from Cybertrader to Tradecast. They offered discounts on commissions at first to encourage it....but finally had to just cut cyber off. I kid you not...some guys wouldn't switch...the said screw it and left. Cyber had a few features that Tradecast at the time didn't. Traders that use Watcher though , especially won't switch easily so if Datek owns them.....hmm.....
They do make it hard to trade from (although they have been improving it, it seems every month or so) I am thinking of switching brokers because i am becoming more active and lack of the trading platform makes it difficult! I have also been finding better commision rates.
I'm still at Datek too, but I'm planning to transfer most of my assets to another broker which offers a per-share commission (like IB, for example). Datek's $10 ticket charge is attractive if you prefer to trade in large lots up to 5,000 shares per transaction, but I personally like to trade in small lots as low as only 100 shares. When trading in small lots, Datek's $10 ticket charge makes trading very expensive compared to the brokers which offer a per-share commission.