TD Ameritrade starting to get it right

using TOS? check what you got in your mail.

Trading elsewhere? ooops, sorry... see what you are missing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWxHjG8rTNM

 

Agree completely. Of the "free" platforms, TOS is hands above tradestation and IB. IB does have its better fees. Pretty soon, there'll be less of a need to go with cqg or esignal.

 

Did that video say anything about finally having watchlists show the "last trade" prices for stocks during extended hours?

 

Doesn't it show it now? I thought it does.
Or maybe only for existing positions... Let me know if you want me to check it out.

Anyway, much beyond that video I feel like they have improved a lot. The iPad app works properly, they made some cool minor updates to TOS desktop and most importantly the software crashes never returned.

 

looks like a toy. TD is and will always be just as a "marketing" company.

 

Serious traders code their own platforms around a data feed anyway.

It looks very pretty though.

 

Yes, although bids and asks are kept up-to-date during extended hours, the Last field for stocks is either zero during pre-market or the value it had at the 4PM close during the after-hours session. TOS support said that one can look at the "Mark" field, which is the midpoint between bid and ask, to get some idea of where the stocks are trading. That's better than nothing, but I'd rather see the actual last trade. The Last price for futures is kept up-to-date round the clock as far as I can tell.

 

You can't minimize the TOS desktop platform built with about a million lines of Java code. It's very impressive.
Want to use an API only and build around it ?
Let's see, at 1000 lines of code per day, you'll have something equivalent to TOS in about 3 years.
Good luck with that.

 

It's extremely usable for just about any purpose, and for options it's outstanding. I ain't Soros, nor do I have any delusions I'll ever be him, so for me it's just fine. I decided I'd have to make my peace with being under TD. This is the 2nd time I've wound up with them from being with someone else. If the broker is good, TD swallows them up. Annoying, but not something you can do anything about.
As to crashes, it has been working OK for the last month or so, so I wouldn't say the crashes have gone away. Let's give that one another month, eh?

 

Sierracharts has so incredibly many choices for customizing your setup that it's almost like writing it yourself [without all the coding...]

AMIbroker is so fast it's unreal and they have a feature rich interface dll for working with IB's servers. Perfect for automated trading [without all the coding...]