The correct order is: Laser Assent Sterling Lightspeed With the only possible room for debate being putting Laser ahead of Assent... they can be argued to be equals. People who compare lightspeed don't know their shit. Assent is a slightly better platform than Laser interface wise, it has better colors, but I have to call Laser superior only because it hasn't gone down on me ever and I haven't had any of the problems people I know in Assent offices have been having. When Anvil works smoothly it's as good as anything. I haven't seen Laser have as much as a stuck quote on a fed day, which really impresses me. Lightspeed is a joke of a platform. If you guys can figure out how to route your orders proactively through lightspeed let me know... if you like trading through the market, lightspeed is great. Sterling is decent, it has a lot of options, you can send all the same orders that you can with Assent and Laser, you get no support when you have problems and you do get random data outages. BTW I have traded on Laser Lightspeed Sterling AND Anvil.
Sterling sucks. I would put that last. Almost every day it freezes and terrible quotes on fed day. Absolutely terrible as the ecn books just stack up on each other and the data freezes. Tradestation and even IB is better. Laser is blazing fast. i've seen a fellow trader on it. But i don't know how it is on fed day.
anvil has many more bells and whistles than lightspeed. also,the stock scanners are so much better its not even funny. a friend i know has light speed and if you shut down your platform you cannot keep an order live. anvil gives an option when shutting down your platform;:"cancel orders or or keep it . liits a mystery to me why light speed woul'nt have this option makes no sense at all. also,light speed charts there are alot of tails from bad ticks that show up and screw up your technicals. HOWEVER,light speed is fast,does'nt go down alot,and its much better than anvil for shorting.