I've been using MBT for a couple months now and I've been very pleased so far. Customer service has been good, executions are fast and the commissions are very reasonable. I thought I would mention the couple of issues that I have had however... 1. They go down over the weekend, which is understandable but the data doesn't just freeze where it left off, instead it is often wildy inaccurate until the following Monday. Last weekend the software reported that I had no open positions at all when in fact I had several. Logging into their website showed the same thing. I was concerned maybe they had liquidated my account until Monday came around and it all went to normal. In previous weekends I could see my open positions but the numbers were often incorrect. 2. The software does has some bugs. In particular I had to quickly sell some options recently and there is a feature where you can right-click on them directly in the positions window and close the position. Unfortunately this always causes a failed transaction for some reason and by the time I figured out an alternate way to close them I had lost close to $1000. There are also little things like the expiration column for options is a month off. 3. The profit and loss columns on the Positions window only shows PnL for that trading day and there doesn't seem to be any way to find out overall PnL based on the original price paid except by logging into the website for a portfolio report which isn't updated until the next day it seems. In addition, these aren't really issues but limitations that I have found frustrating... 1. No option greeks or even IV. I know it is a bare-bones broker but for options these are often as important as the price itself. 2. Not enough 3rd party supported software. I'd love to be able to use AmiBroker or TradeStation without having to subscribe to another feed. 3. No backfill support for the 3rd party software they do support such as QuoteTracker. Overall I am pleased as execution/commissions/customer service are my primary goals and I'm hopeful some of the above will be fixed/implemented at some point. Dave...
these are the 2 worse factors mentioned hope you can get those adjustments made in short order hope you can reign in the market data vendor fees because that's where your costs will spiral out of control
xGambit, First, thank you for the kind comments. They are appreciated. Let me see if I can help with some of the issues. Please read below>>>>> I've been using MBT for a couple months now and I've been very pleased so far. Customer service has been good, executions are fast and the commissions are very reasonable. I thought I would mention the couple of issues that I have had however... 1. They go down over the weekend, which is understandable but the data doesn't just freeze where it left off, instead it is often wildy inaccurate until the following Monday. Last weekend the software reported that I had no open positions at all when in fact I had several. >>>I can look into a cleanup and reset of data. I get the fresh account information from Penson late Sunday night so there is not much I can do for updating the account data until late Sunday. Logging into their website showed the same thing. I was concerned maybe they had liquidated my account until Monday came around and it all went to normal. In previous weekends I could see my open positions but the numbers were often incorrect. >>>What numbers are you referring to? I can look into that and fix if possible. 2. The software does has some bugs. In particular I had to quickly sell some options recently and there is a feature where you can right-click on them directly in the positions window and close the position. Unfortunately this always causes a failed transaction for some reason and by the time I figured out an alternate way to close them I had lost close to $1000. There are also little things like the expiration column for options is a month off. >>>Never should, this only goes to MBTX so I need to know what msg box said. Route not available? As far as expirations being off, huh? 3. The profit and loss columns on the Positions window only shows PnL for that trading day and there doesn't seem to be any way to find out overall PnL based on the original price paid except by logging into the website for a portfolio report which isn't updated until the next day it seems. >>>Yep, Daytrading is FIFO In addition, these aren't really issues but limitations that I have found frustrating... 1. No option greeks or even IV. I know it is a bare-bones broker but for options these are often as important as the price itself. >>>Understood. Already have a ticket open for this. 2. Not enough 3rd party supported software. I'd love to be able to use AmiBroker or TradeStation without having to subscribe to another feed. >>>huh? I dont fully understand because we do offer a range of third party vendors. Please visit the following links http://www.mbtrading.com/thirdPartyTs.asp or http://www.mbtrading.com/integration.asp 3. No backfill support for the 3rd party software they do support such as QuoteTracker. >>>Ok, Ill see what I can do Overall I am pleased as execution/commissions/customer service are my primary goals and I'm hopeful some of the above will be fixed/implemented at some point. Dave...
Thanks for the help! I'll message you privately about the specific issues. 3. The profit and loss columns on the Positions window only shows PnL for that trading day and there doesn't seem to be any way to find out overall PnL based on the original price paid except by logging into the website for a portfolio report which isn't updated until the next day it seems. >>>Yep, Daytrading is FIFO Not sure I understand. I'm not daytrading the positions. I just want know how much a position has profited or lost based on the original price I paid. >>>Understood. Already have a ticket open for this. Awesome! 2. Not enough 3rd party supported software. I'd love to be able to use AmiBroker or TradeStation without having to subscribe to another feed. >>>huh? I dont fully understand because we do offer a range of third party vendors. Please visit the following links http://www.mbtrading.com/thirdPartyTs.asp or http://www.mbtrading.com/integration.asp I should qualify that statement. MBT does has a great deal of 3rd party support. I just keep getting into the situation where I have to pay for another feed. Often this has nothing to do with MBT because vendors like eSignal do not give you a choice. There are plenty of software packages that work with MBT but I still have to buy a seperate feed to get historical data. I'm also just really picky about software and I don't think you can ever support enough software. 3. No backfill support for the 3rd party software they do support such as QuoteTracker. >>>Ok, Ill see what I can do That would be great! Dave...
MBT-Steve, when will MB have both the ARCA & INET books functioning within the quotes for the full trading day? Any fixed date available?
seaside...... The ARCA issue should be fixed in the next few days. Regarding INET we currently send every INET update to the client... we have monitored this. The updates can hit upwards of 300+ times per second for a single symbol. It is too much for most clients to handle. We have plans to rewrite the quote data.. but it is not trivial. Regards, Steve
When working with MB Navigator, NeoTicker can grab either free internet data or paid data to merge with real-time data streamed from MB Navigator. MB's data has an advantage that it is truly tick by tick with all bid/ask updates in the stream.