I've read through all of the reviews of cyber trader, mb trading, scottrade, think or swim, and 20 of ib. What I get is these brokers have lots of issues. It seems to me TOS is the only real good broker overall. It has highest ratings, however I see it is best for options. I'm not interested in options. I'm interested in swing and position trading. So would TOS be the choice for level II execution, speed for swing trading? Is my analaysis correct? Or as a newbie am I missing out in the bigger picture?
I've done a lot of in-depth comparisons of Cyber, DirectPro, and TOS over the past year and am using TOS -- and I have a strong opinion that I'll offer: Cyber has <some> good features -- but their charting software is absolute crap -- difficult & annoying to set up, cumbersome, weird and unintuitive menu/options design, horrendouosly terrible charting -- absolutely sucks. The software is OLD technology/design (from a programming point of view). I get pissed every time I use it. TOS is extremely sophisticated, extremely easy to use; far, far more advanced (technologically) than Cyber or anyone else. TOS's proprietary charts (TOSCharts) are the sweetest & most easy to use of ANY package out htere, plus they have Prophit -- PLUS THEY ARE CONSTANTLY IMPROVING the software (something Cyber never really does all). The ONLY shortcoming for TOS is that they do nit display all of the level II data -- they have this "summarized" version -- which is normally sufficient, but you do not get TIME and SALES. If they add that then they are unbeatable. Cyber has a better Trade window (i.e., all Level II data, and Time and sales) bbut you pay a lot of money for it -- TOS's version is "simplified" or summarized -- but the rest of the platform is light years ahead of Cyber an all the rest of the competition... Technologicaly there is no comparison at alll -- Cyber is a joke, it sucks -- TOS is incredible nice and easy to use and half the time, when I contact tech support with a question I end up talking to the owner! Go with TOS. CYber is a dead and decaying dinosour compared to TOS.
i'll second the above. i use for options and its the sweetest options platfrom i've ever seen. i never thought i'd say this but it puts ib to shame
Another vote for TOS - they roll out new features that are actually useful every month and are very responsive to their customers' requests, so I'd imagine time and sales are coming soon.
TOS great for Options bit expensive for futures compared to others and I havent found their T&S function.
No! The platform is good for option trading only, imo. They don't have real Level II, not a good platform for short-term scalping.
I only trade stocks and I highly recommend TOS over anything else. Other TOS benefits: their papermoney is real-time, so it is great for testing and demo-ing... Also: with TOS you can switch between per/share and per/trade commissions, on the fly, thru a menu option, which sounds minor but is a tremendous advantage. Versus Cyber, TerrraNova, etc, in which you are committed to either type of pricing for a month... ANyway, why not open a trial accout and trade papermpey for a while, and really gove the TOSCharts a work-out?