The recent (three I believe) problems with losing overnight positions is a serious. I don't care if its MBT's fault or Penson's fault - I am not Penson's customer, I am MBT's - MBT needs to get their shit together and find a new clearing firm if Penson can't do the job. One of the three times it cost me real money but in MBT's defense I got on MBT chat and within a couple of minutes one of the guys fixed my account manually and got me back in business. That's great but that kind of crap should not happen at all and definitely should not have happened multiple times in a recent months. Regarding delayed quotes - I call BS on "I am 100% sure that MBTrading's real-time quote is often delayed by about 1 second." First of all if you are going to make statements like that you need to be specific, what products are you talking about, stocks, futures, FX? For emini's (which I care about) they quotes are definitely not lagging and I have progammatic proof of it (I have a program that can stream quote data from both IB and MBT via their respective API's for comparison). I also use eSignal as a 3rd point of reference. I have suffered thru MBT's quote lagging/freezing/disconnecting during heavy market activity (ex: FOMC meeting results) in the past but have not had that happen to me since they announced they had upgraded their infrastructure (email dated 8/5/07) - fingers crossed that they finally have that problem solved once and for all.
GTS: re: positions & Penson Ross replied on SI. http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=23815188
Anybody else having problems staying connected to MBT's quote server? I'm trading ER2 and can't stay connected for more than a minute.
I call BS on the "Penson was too backlogged" excuse. My other futures broker is ThinkOrSwim (who also clears through Penson) and ToS had no issues at all that day. Those suggesting to go to online chat have had better luck than I have in the past. I've found the online guys to be totally useless for things other than simple software and brokerage questions. For specific questions on your positions and such, they always tell you to call the main line. In contrast, ThinkOrSwim does almost everything over their online chat. I'll probably stay with MBT, but only as a backup.
Well, the backlog issue w/Penson was stated by Ross, the co-founder of MBT. I've found him to be honest and upfront in all past dealings. And I went to the Penson site the day in question and they didn't have positions updated nor trades confirmed for that day. Re: online chat options - In March I was down in St. John on vacation. Somehow I blew away my stored password and tried to log in multiple times. After exceeding the limit I started up an online chat session. I had thought I keyed in the correct password and was worried someone had hacked my account. In the chat session, after verifying my account number and my identity, I asked for every position I held. The MBT guy gave me all the positions he showed and I was able to then verify that everything was intact. At no time did the guy tell me to call them on the phone - not sure why you'd say that 's what you were told. If you can verify your account number, your personal information they'll give you most any info on your account you request - including positions. I've been with them almost 5 years and have found their customer service, which I rarely use, to be far above their peers.