Charles Schwab dipped their toes into the hyperactive trading business and discovered that the gap between the minimum commissions structure they could take and the commissions semi-pros could take was the size of the grand canyon. There was no structure for them to make it work so they exited stage left. This TD Amtd thing is nothing like the Investools arrangement and so I kind of resent the comparison made on the call by the TOS guys the other night. TOS guys reminded us that a stream of negative emails came in following the Investools deal and things worked out fine despite the naysayers. This deal is different. This TD thing is orders of magnitude worse. Its a giant retail incompetent company taking ownership, key word ownership of an entrepreneurial gem. TD's customers are money losing zombies and TD are fine with that, they are a marketing company. They know their customers are know-nothing money losing lemings. TOS are now owned. I hate it. Too bad.
TOS is surprisingly weak in futures options, wouldn't you say? AFAIK they offer only ES AND NQ and, within the last couple of weeks, they added CL (crude) and that is all. I can't see this acquisition strengthening this area, but I may be very wrong.
Lack of a broad product spectrum has always been one of their problems, but they are slowly adding more and more. In my experience the ES options are quite good to trade while the NQ options are a complete waste of time, and I gave up on them. There are a lot of futures options where there just isnât enough volume and market maker support to make them tradable. There are actually two things I think they need to change right now and I have been bugging them, so any who agree please email them. The first is they do their 1 hour charts on the hour instead of the half hour, and the second is to add constant volume charts.
Here is a list of the futures available on TOS (scroll down the page): https://www.thinkorswim.com/tos/displayPage.tos?webpage=servicesOrderTypes 100oz Gold/ZG Silver/ZI Australian Dollar/6A British Pound Sterling/6B Canadian Dollar/6C CBOT Corn/ZC Mini DOW/YM Mini Gold/YG Mini Silver/YI Soybeans/ZS Wheat/ZW E-mini Japanese Yen/J7 E-mini NASDAQ 100/NQ E-mini Russell 2000/TF E-mini S&P 500/ES E-Mini S&P MidCap 400/EMD Eurodollar/GE Euro F/X/6E Fed Funds/ZQ Japanese Yen/6J LIBOR/GLB Light Sweet Crude Oil/CL Mexican Peso/6M Mini Euro FX/E7 New Zealand Dollar/6N Nikkei 225/NKD NYMEX miNY Light Sweet Crude Oil/QM Platinum/PL Oats/ZO Soy Meal/ZM Soy Oil/ZL Swiss Franc/6S US Dollar Index/DX
My concern if I felt forced to change is the Analyze Tab in TOS- I don't see any of these brokers mentioning that type capability. Also TOS margining for complex positions like double diagonals is better than most other platforms (where they require margin on both sides).
Aside from the information already in this thread i thought i'd pass along some information from one of the co-founders. Pardon any repetition. Clearing will eventually move to AMTD once they are able to handle everything that ToS can do. (It seems there is a contract with Penson through 2010) Penson will most likely be used for Futures and Forex. Executing brokers will not change. Tom and Scott are not going anywhere and they do not plan to let their customers down. (They are lifers--my words and observations) I think all of the negative speculation is unwarranted. I too am disappointed about this deal but it is what it is and if anyone can keep ToS a great company it is the co-founders. When the IT deal happened a few years ago things did change but overall it's not that bad. This deal is much different and we all know the score but Tom and Scott will set the standard. I just hope they still reply to my every beckon call in a few minutes as they have for the last four years. If you're really that upset now then hit the bricks kid. Become a broker yourself or trade at another firm and quit your whining. ToS doesn't owe you shiite. Cheers
i was left with the same impressions after the tos call. i have been involved in companies that swallowed up smaller companies and despite the promises of autonomy, those promises eventually fade and the smaller company starts acting like its parent. in the call, tom/scott said that this merger provided advantages to tos in the form of additional resources which would then allow them to do things they otherwise couldn't. but if that were the case, why didn't tda simply invest an equity position in tos? tda clearly wants more control than an equity position could give them.
Yes but of these, you can only trade options on ES, NQ and CL. Also TOS has no bond futures (ZB) as of yet.
I've been a tos trader for over three years. The commish was a bit higher than IB, but the platform and customer service (you never need it till you NEED it) were top-notch and worth the difference. Congrats to Tom and Scott on the deal. I'm sure they made out extremely well on it. I'm also sure they'll keep their customer's interest at heart. However, if you've been trading for more than 15 minutes in the real world you know how this is going to play out down the road. I'm in the process of pulling my accounts. I'm sick to my stomach to have to do this. But it'll be much, much worse to watch tos die a long, slow death.