Are u sure? The branch manager I talked to last week said no naked, and they were exploring cash-secured puts.
I just got a screwed up execution today with scottrade. I sure cant wait till my check clears at IB. I put in a market order for a few contracts The spread was something like 3.70 3.90 moving around rapidly. I waited and waited and no confirmation popped up. I checked my account in another window to find an executed order at 2.90. For a total of 580 for the two i bought. WOW I said. I knew it was bouncing around fast, but thats insane. I put in a limit order to sell at 3.70 and immediately recieved confirmation of the sell. AFTER that I got the confirmation popup from my earlier buy order telling me I had purchased the contracts at 3.90. WTF?! I go refresh my other account window and see that it now says i bought at 3.90 and sold at 3.70! I'm DONE with scottrade. I've noticed that their options quotes don't stream or update properly, but I thought I was playing it safe checking my account in the other window. This degree of misleading data is just not acceptable.
disclaimer: not affiliated with TDWaterhouse except only as a customer.... having said that, they have done very well for me in my options trading. i even tried MROptions before they got bought by JBOxford because i was tempted by their low-commissions and i don't even wanna elaborate on my experience with them, but it was BAD. TDWaterhouse's commission is not the greatest, but execution is incedibly top-notch! i never knew it until i tried MROptions, and realized the comm is nothing compared to execution costs (slow fills and you have to keep changing your order and chase the bids or the asks coz your order is not there until a minute or two later). now, my comm rate is not that bad and i'm a swing-trader, so it's perfect for me. i'm a platinum level now and pay $9.95 per order plus 1.25 per contract. i know, i know... not that great. this is the lowest it's gonna get as i'm already a platinum level having made 30+ trades in the past year (or maybe 6 months). as good as TDWaterhouse is to me, i still don't put market-orders anymore because of one bad-experience with MROptions (again). from another thread, an example: here's one that i didn't even say anything on my post, but at the time i put in the order to close this postion, i thought TDWaterhouse was doing a MrOptions on me. real-time quote (from my fidelity acct, because i found out that TDwaterhouse's quotes are good, but not as good as fidelity's) was 3.20 x 3.40. i put the order to sell 3.30. checked the fidelity quotes and they weren't changing. i usually see my order within 3 seconds... nothing. 10 - 30 seconds, and still nothing and the volume hasn't gone up. man, what's going on. this is like eternity. finally, i my order status on TDW showed i got partial fill on 10, but the other 5 are still pending open order. now the quotes are 3.3 x 3.4 on fidelity. damn, still not getting filled on the my 5 and the volume still is not going up even with my 10 already executed. then "bam" volume goes up by over 100, and my finaly 5 contracts got filled at 3.30. TDW wasn't doing anything shady it seemed. just another big order was going on in the market at the time of my order... Good Luck to you... my advice if you're already good at trading stocks, is trade SPY, DIA, KO, PEP or even QQQQ options that are very liquid and the spread is minimum at times (.05). trade long-term options, too, like 4 months or longer. Peace
I was wrong. It was E-trade I was thinking of with the 30% margin requirement. Scottrade only wants conservative option investments. Sorry about that.
the only way to assure "superior" fills at the price you are seeking, and even at the bid, is to enter a limit order and risk missing a move; I try not to put in market options orders when I am sure I can fill at my price, whereas when the underlying is moving rapidly, and I want in, market is the order of choice. IMHO
The funny thing, is that Scottrade allows covered calls, but selling cash-secured puts--no way. Is that silly or what? Needless to say, I stopped trading with them years ago.
I quit trading with Scottrade many years ago too. Perhaps someone can confirm something I was told about Scottrade. An acquaintance said they placed an online order as a GTC and then their web connection was down for a few days. While their web connection was down, they called into Scottrade to have the order cancelled only to be told there would be a $20.00 charge to do that. Is this true? Has Scottrade become so arrogant to chare like this to cancel an order?
Yes, they charge $27 for Broker Assisted trades vs $7 for regular online trades, though frankly, thats the least of their problems.