TD (Toronto Dominion) is a canadian based bank, and those banks have a very low risk tolerance towards futures traders. So, I am not sure what support futures traders will get as a result of this. Also, this reminds me of when OptionsXpress bought XpressTrade which at the time was a very good platform. They "killed" it and no memory is left from it while all integrated into their own platform. It seems it's the trend when big guys but the small companies...they leave nothing of them. too bad..I heard that TOS was once a great platform. RG
I think TDAT does value and want the business of futures traders. It is taking TDAT longer to become a futures clearing merchant than TDAT had originally thought. I expect TDAT to eventually become a FCM and no longer need the services of Penson GHCO for futures clearing. I would rather have TDAT clearing my futures trading than Penson. Penson manages their internal company business about as bad as our elected officials manage the US government. For me, the viability of Penson is what is troubling.
I hope they're not going to switch to TDA's quote feed. Too often, it provides quotes delayed by seconds or minutes, and sometimes the quotes just stop coming.
MB trading used to have $1 per 100 shares stock trading but I think they replaced that with 4.95 min. Is there any place without a min. charge for stock trades?
Interactive Brokers charges half a cent per share with a dollar minimum charge. For me that is cheaper than using MB Trading to fill the same orders.
I'm a long time TOS user. They officially suck now. Options, futures, and forex are all considered different accounts now. In order to trade futures, you need to formally segregate money into a subaccount. I realize this probably happened behind the scenes anyway, but now you formally have to do it. Many accounts have completely screwed up buying power currently this entire day preventing any trading, it's all no bueno currently. Too bad, TOS had something special going on at one point. Now they officially suck.
The segregated-account thing is only temporary, we're being told. TD is not a FCM yet and as such futures are still cleared thru Penson. They said on last evening's chat that they are in the process of becoming a registered FCM and as such that account segregation will go away. My account also had screwed up buying power and ~50K cash 'missing' from the TOS desktop client even though it still showed up in the website cash management page. But as of a few minutes ago, it's reporting proper funding levels as it should along with my existing positions. They knew about this problem early on this morning and it affected a *ton* of people based on what I'm hearing. But yeah - logging in at 0730 and seeing warnings about maintenance margin -- coupled with a huge chunk of cash missing -- is so not the right way to start the day. I expected a few hiccups in such a merger when it goes 'live' technically -- that said, my fingers are crossed that things smooth out for them this week.