I'm out. Don't have time now, but will be opening with Schwab on Thursday. Hopefully that'll get me out of the current mess, and not get me trapped as a TDA customer during the integration. I've been acquired enough times over the years (OPXS, OpenEcry, ThinkorSwim) to know it's seldom a smooth experience for those being acquired. If I was doing active futs trading still I'd open a dedicated futs account somewhere, but my futs activity is not short-term anymore.
I seriously think this outage has something to do with the Schwab buyout. Most of these IT guys will be redundant and they may be sabotaging the platform. 2 days of this is not normal in this industry.
+1 This is very unusual. I've been with TOS almost from the beginning. It's a well built platform. It could be as you said or with no more commissions, they are short staffed.
I think the platform is waaaay too bloated. They should have a bare bones version for simple charting and execution.
Spoke to my acct rep at TD, who I do like. Told them I was planning to move my acct but b/c this person was so good to me over the years (I rarely paid commissions, had self-directed access to planning software, etc) I'd do so gradually over the next few weeks so their personal AUM metric won't take a big hit so close to the legal date of the merger closing, unless the current problems remain unsolved for another few days - then all bets are off. They totally understood my position & appreciated the personal gesture.
I've traded through AMP but only a small account. I didn't have any problems but I wouldn't be comfortable putting a significant sum with them. I've seen too many firms their size go bust, or fold.