I do not use Schwab as my Day Trading Broker â I use IB for that task. Today I decided to place a trade on ZNGA in my Schwab account with the intention to sell on any pop after the earnings release. Normally I just do this with IB and never have any issues. In the aftermarket I could not get the trade to execute for almost 10 minutes as it sat there even when my price to sell was below the best Bid. I would cancel and re submit â same thing it just sat. It finally went off at $2.91. I called Schwab while the trade was active and they told me it was sitting out there and then they gave some BS excuse about pre and after market trading. My response was that I have been day trading for 14 years and know very well how the pre and after markets work. Last year I had the same issue, but that was because my settings in the Schwab trading Platform were set up wrong. They are good for swing and long term trading but for Day Trading and especially after hours trading run donât walk away from them.
I had an issue like that with them years ago. As i recall I was trying to do something premarket and there was some BS about the period just before the open. They had some cockamamie procedure that i don't recall, but it meant my order didn't go live. I don't recall the details, but I do recall it made no sense to me. I routinely do after hours trades with them however, and don't have any problems.
Sounds more likely that your account is not set up properly for after-hours trading. On IB, if you do not have after-hours trading requested, the same thing will happen. Your order will sit there waiting for regular hours trading to begin.
My account was set up correctly for after hours trading and I routed it correctly for an after hours trade. I posted that Scwhab even confirmed my trade was live. As I said I had this issue a year ago when my account was not set up for after hours. There is no excuse for that kind of delay in execution.
Not necessarily -- I observed a very similar thing using another major discount broker through which I have full permissions to trade extended hours -- extended hours trading went right through my live extended-hours order. I've noticed in the past that my broker doesn't send its orders to wherever it will execute, but rather to whatever venue or market maker gives it the highest PFOF. If that means the client loses out on a trade, so be it. FYI, this is the modus operondi of virtually all retail brokers now -- perhaps they make more money off of these little bribes than they do off of explicit commissions, and it's all perfectly legal, at least in the context of how the law is presently enforced. The solution I have is to direct my orders to whatever venue has the best bid or offer rather than using the broker's "smart" routing system. And if the broker won't let me do this or charges too much extra for it, time to go elsewhere, unless it's an account in which I do very few trades per year.
Agreed then that this is disgraceful behavior by the broker. I wonder if Schwab allows you to direct orders to a particular venue? Would that be a way around it?
That's all HFTs trading amongst themselves either sub pennying your order and market fragmentation; that is definitely not Schwabs or any brokers fault.
I donât agree â IB after hours orders are instant â these bozos at Schwab should not advertise after hours trading when you canât get anything executed correctly . Bottom line is Schwab sucks for trading . I could not even get the after hours route until 4:05 , I tried to route via ARCA and NSda but it would not work â probably because they went in as day orders. Then at 4:05 I was able to route what Schwabb calls â Schwab after hours â See the attached JPG for details â when I put the trades in Best Bid was at or higher than my sales price. Finally I put the last sell order in a $2.91 and a minute later it went off.
Its HFTs posting orders but not really executing eg yesterday in preferred stock FNFG.PRB bid price changed 6k times from $29.45 to $29.62 for 12 minutes without a single execution. Its HFTs penny jumping.