Hey all... I have read many poor posts about Scottrade's unreliable quotes and even downtime. My question is, has there been any recent experience with that. I am soon going to trade more actively (swingtrade) and I already have a Scottrade account that has been sitting around. I opened it up the last couple weeks and the streaming quotes seem fine and 100% reliable. Have they gotten their act together there or is this just a good period and it is destined to screw active traders again?
Im using Scottrade to swing and daytrade using their ScottradeELITE platform which is decent for me so far. I want to move to IB but I cant until I turn 21. I just hate not having bracket orders or control over order routing. The charting and features leave much to be desired. I never have had any freezes or quote delay problems. The flat $7 per trade is nice if you buy large blocks and dont scale. Be aware if you modify a partially filled order it will be another $7 every time. The flat commission helps me as much as it hurts. All in all its nice to start out with to see if you really wont to do this. If everything works out for you and you end up making money you can always make the jump later.
I have been using ScottradeElite to swing trade. When push comes to shove they must be rated very poorly. They maybe okay if you don't mind having their server go down, slow start ups, data feeds that don't match the actual market conditions and most importantly "bogus" executions. I have had a series of situations were it took about ~1:30 minutes for trades to complete execution and in that time I watched the order entry window and full quote window "ticker" drop in price significantly. I also observed the chart on the ticker of interest matched the other windows perfectly. When the transaction(s) were completed about 1:30 minutes later I had lost significant sums of money. After this issue occurred a 2nd time I watched their "Trade_&_Sales" window; All the window matched perfectly. Now, when I complained to Scottrade they said all was done correctly. Now, I make decisions based on the data feed I'm supplied with. Their data feed either is garbage and or else it is a fluke. Somehow I don't think that it was a fluke. I'm presently reviewing online dialogs and Barron's 2006 brokerage surveys to see which is best for my needs. If someone had great luck with their brokerage when the trading is fast, heavy and the data feeds match your actual purchases/sales times and windows, please comment. At this time I'm considering Fidelity Active Traders, MBTrading and IB. In summary, if you are looking at Scottrade (ScottradeElite) and looking for fast, consisted, satisfactory results beware of the dangers. They to could cost you significant sums of money, real and opportunity costs.
I have used Scott for over 4 years, it has been good except for the data feed. I would recommend for new traders. For me its time to move to MB or Ameritrade
Scottrade is excellent as an order taker for swing trading. Their site is not advanced. Why depend on them for quotes or news? Unlike the other discounts, they have local branches so when the market is crazy and ETrade's website is down and there are 1 hour waiting periods to speak with a broker, you can just mosey down to the local Scottrade office and take care of business. The commissions are not the cheapest out there, but they are not bad for swing trading. $7 could be a two cent spread on a swing trade, so why bother getting something cheaper but less functional?
I have one chart set to $spx and it gets behind whenever the market makes a big move. Sometimes three to four minutes behind, then just one big bar to catch up.(on a one minute bar chart) Quotes work fine on the open, then about twenty to thirty minute into the session, it can take twenty seconds or so for the quote/chart to come up on occasion. Another problem is with volume. When you pull up a chart, the volume going forward is from a different source than volume that is already on the chart. So you may immediately start getting much larger volume numbers on your chart. None of this matters if you swingtrade, it's hell if you daytrade off one minute charts.
If you guys daytrade, why not join a pro firm? You can get a better rate if you negotiate. Plus the technical support maybe better too. Look them up on elite search. best of luck!