by the way, another comparasion between. OptionsHouse and thinkorswim if you are flagged as a day trader: you need 50K in OH, while in TOS it is 25K Also TOS has futures account , all under one roof.. but now. the flat 14.95 for upto 4 legs.. it is too CHEAP.. say we do 10 contract and buy an Iron condor. that saves us a lot.
I hear ya. There will be no perfect broker, not even TOS. I don't day trade or do futures. Can't afford the time, tried it, can't do it. Would like to be flat at the close, but just not the right time for me. Gotta set up high % positions and manage them. Works better for me. OH just might be a spreaders Eden. Will see.
I can't speak from personal experience, but no you don't. It says it right in the FAQ, Trading subsection, number 13. An account is considered a Pattern Day Trading Account if it has more than three Day Trades in five business days. Industry regulations require that pattern Day Traders must maintain a minimum of $25,000 of margin equity. Accounts that have less than $25,000 of margin equity will be issued zero Day Trading Buying Power (DTBP) on the date the call is issued. In other words, if the account ends the session with equity of less than $25,000, it will have zero day trading buying power the following day. There will be no changes to Overnight Buying Power (ONBP).
I finally registered with them and got to play with their platform using DEMO account. There were some glitches in sign-up, some javascript error and review screen was not populating completely. My first look on their platform was impressive. Good and feature rich web-platform. I will agree with earlier comment about their buggy software. I added a stock to my watch-list and guess what; i see 3 of them. I delete the last one, they all go away Added again, 5 entries this time. Refreshed that section, 10 entries now. Refreshed again, 20 entries. The platform is good but certainly not of production quality. I'll hate to buy 5 calls where I only wanted to buy 1. These type of things are costlier than the amount that you save in commission. Simple stuff like trailing-stop was also very confusing to me. Guess I'm not funding my account for now. Hope that helps.
I used OH for a while. Executions are ok. I like it, but stopped using it since there are some stocks you cannot trade like OTC stuff.
Just curious what web browser you use cause I've never had problems with the website. .. I've also never added anything to my watch list so I'll have to try it and see what happens. (FF 3.0.* here)
I tried "PortableFirefox 3.0.5" and IE6 both. https://www.optionshouse.com/signup/ Sixth step (verify) was not showing all data in FF (IE6 was even worse, I could neither see complete data nor button for the next step).
BTW, if you are signing up for OPTIONSHOUSE, there is only one shot to get your application printed .which you have to fax. if you miss that popup page during the signup,then it is gone and you have to call customer service who will fax it to you: unless you fax it back, your account wont be activated. once ACH is activated. it is then a smooth process. Also, I must add , that other than the one quirk I had with the 5/1 call execution, it is intitutive to use. and place limit orders, quickly modify them, monitor them, check activity. and see your real time holdings. etc. I found them better than my past brokers: scottrade/ tradeking/zecco.
Yah. I went and added something to my watchlist after you said that and sure enough it doubled up in there. Strange. The only sections I use on the place are the account and options tabs. Occasionally the hotlist and indexes but never seen the place screw up. Anyways, good luck to you either way.