wow..thanks for the great replies...is the $3,500 initial deposit negotiable with them or cannot deposit less?...thanks...
Not to side track the thread... I have read the rave reviews on TOS for options, however, very little is mentioned regarding their suitability for stocks. Is TOS primarily for option trading, or is it preferred over IB for position/swing trading of equities. My intended account size would be approximately $100K, with trades ranging between $2K-$10K. I intend to trade options after having paper traded for 6-months. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you kindly.
TOS is what one would call a "boutique" broker. Their specialty is options, but they have made several enhancements which make it more stock friendly... most noteably, bracket trading.
I've liked them. I'm not a pro, just primarily a swing trader. Been at it a couple of years. I've learned a lot using their graphs. I wish they had more documentation though - I have to write support for elaborations on things - e.g., one place they will show Volatility, another they will show Implied Volatility, so I'm not sure if they are both referring to IV or one is IV and the other is Historic Vol. They post the Wednesday interactions with Tom, which I used to enjoy reading in the evenings, but now Tom's audio, so reading the PDF you only see what people are asking, and you have to listen to the whole audio to find the response; it used to be a lot better when you could just scan the PDF for the question and answers. But these are just 'nitpickings' - I like using them. My only other experience with options had been on Fidelity's system; I like TOS better.