RIP Thinkorswim

Same thing happened to me years ago at OXPS when they had similar problems one day early in my trading days. I was comfortably long 2 /ES contracts and exited a position ... but the page never showed the order filling, so I redid the order. And again. I was on hold for like 25 minutes trying to get it resolved with the order desk.

While on-hold, the page refreshed and I was short something like 6 or 10 /ES contracts with the position barely profitable.....it then turned a slight loss. *major panic* That said, the trade desk did right by me, though -- refunded my commissions and covered the (minor) loss on the erroneous position.

Still scared the %$%$ out of me, though ... not knowing.

This morning, when I saw problems getting orders updated via TOS Desktop, I cancelled the few I had pending and waited for things to settle down just to be sure/safe. (I was in no major rush on those orders anyway)

 

http://www.chicagosean.com/2011/10/...e-life-of-a-reluctant-td-ameritrade-customer/


I’ve been a staunch supporter of their platform since the very first day I became a customer and would recommend them to every person that inquired of me who to select as their options trading platform. Never a doubt – “choose thinkorswim” would be my pat answer. “…They are the Gold Standard.”

I love that they are local to me. Love their customer service. Love their educational offerings. Love their platform. Love their mobile and iPad apps. Love their features. Love their stability. Love their reasonable commission rates. And love their commitment to being cutting edge, customer-loving, and constantly improving.

But perhaps I should have said LOVED, in the past tense. Because the thinkorswim that I loved and had been instrumental in my early options trading education was recently sold to TD Ameritrade. And since the handoff took place, thinkorswim has become a shadow of its former self.

 

Has anyone tried negotiating their options commissions lower now with TD? I have $1.50 flat with them (no 9.95 fee) do you think I could get better?

 

esp in light of recent platform probs just email and ask. not sure how much room they have to negotiate since it's under the TD ameritrade umbrella now.

 

how many contracts do you do a qtr?

I have an old account there I use for backup. Fills seem alright.

 

You should be trading at least 100-200 contracts (roundtrip) per month before you can negotiate with them given your current commission rate. However, for reference purposes, back when TOS was not under the TDAM umbrella, my dad negotiated down to $.80/contract and I received a negotiated rate of $1.00/contract.

You may also want to consider moving to Trademonster where you can get .50 contract with no ticket and use Thinkorswim for the analysis. Again, if you're executing volume you can also negotiate with IB (their rack rate is 75 cents/contract) and receive a commission rate which is competitive with Trademonster's pricing. However, their platform's learning curve remains exceedingly steep and given the data feed limitation a huge PIA. Nonetheless after watching a few introductory webinars I'm convinced IB truly is "The Professional's Gateway to the Markets" given the range of markets one can access and the extent of margin they offer to retail customers.

The only reason I bring up the margin issues is because now that TOS clears through TDAM they've REALLY screwed option traders (not stock traders, though) by upping the margin requirements on naked puts/calls as opposed to the days when they were clearing via Penson. This has all led me to seriously consider the moving the majority of my account to IB and keep TOS just for the charting and analytics.

 

Are you sure about this? Their margin on short options is 20% as it has always been. What were you getting before and what are you getting now?

 

Let me further add to this. Every retail customer must post the "exchange minimums" on margin. Some firms "can" be more restrictive on this. But they cannot offer you better then exchange minimums. TOS right now currently has no additional restrictions on exchange minimums. So there has been NO change. Just wanted to clear this up.

 

They do have a special caveat on stocks sub $5 where they want you to put up more dough than the exchange minimums. The reason I know this is because I sold some puts on LLNW prior to the crossover. When the switchover happened, I was getting margined nearly 40% more because of TDAM's additional margin rules because stocks sub $5 are presumably more "volatile." Granted it's a rare case, but one that merits mentioning.