stock777 time and again when a big corporate broker acquires a little fish, the big fish imposes their beauracratic culture and model on the little fish. So no, they'll try and accomodate frequent traders but just like schwab did, they'll f*** it up. Schwab abandoned the highly active trader b/c they could not find a commission structure that was profitable for them. Schwab now makes its money from fees not trading commissions. TD will not be able to make this work under the current commission structure to meet their profit objectives. Maybe, just maybe Sosnoff and all made some pre-agreement as part of the sale. That is my only hope.
Sosnoff says a lot of things. Most of which are from an Iced Tea high. I'm not pleased that an overgrown bucket shop has acquired one of the last independent well run brokerages. The people at ToS are truly special. If it means anything, the guys did hold up their end of the bargain during the IT merger. Even though the staff was definitely under some stress by the increase in sucker rates especially when SP's got clipped 25% in one week in Sept. We will just have to wait and see how things pan out. Preparations at other brokerage houses are in order for now but no drastic moves are needed just yet. If anyone can retain autonomy it is Tom and Scott but we just have to wait and see. Cheers
Don't forget there's a special ToS chat today at 4:15 to discuss. Not sure if it'll be anything more than reassurances and such, but we'll see.
This is so depressing. I recently moved to TOS from Ameritrade. Lower commissions, better trading platform, excellent service and frankly...it was just fun being a part of something unique. I don't see how this could in any way be good for TOS customers.
can you see TOS top guys getting sidelined from trading to spend time at TD corporate holding meetings? That's a question I hope gets addressed on the call.
Active traders with an Ameritrade account use QUOTETRACKER as their trading platform. It has a lot of incredible trading technical tools, charts with every feature imaginable, news, trade scanners, and Level-II. It also happens to be FREE. www.quotetracker.com Interesting to note, Ameritrade just recently beefed-up their hardware (servers) at their server farm that supports Level-I and Level-II quotes. I've been testing it against the DTN "IQ-Feed" and it is spot on, with no lags at all. This used to be my biggest pet peeve of all over the past year with Ameritrade, as their Streamer" data-feed just wasn't up to the incredible amount of data that is now being pumped out of the exchanges. I've traded on a number of platforms from Realtick to Assent's Anvil/Hammer, E-Signal, etc., so I have a pretty good idea about how robust a data-feed is. I did some complaining to people in the technical department at AMTD last Summer, and they finally got around to implementing changes back in December after finishing up some other projects that had priority at the time. Trust me, I'm really "picky" about the speed of quotes and whether they are lagging or not. I can honestly say that their feed is "golden" right now. Moreover, I've been impressed in the way in which the company has tackled my complaints and constructive criticism. It wasn't just the typical "talk the talk" without "walking the walk". When AMTD sees accounts going out the door because of a technical "glitch" that shuts down their services, they get right on it. They can't afford NOT to. If you are an active trader, they will take care of you; negotiate rates, etc. I've been pleased thus far, especially with Jerry Medved and his Quotetracker Platform.
It's happened before. I was trading with Tradescape for a number of years when they were acquired by E*Trade. They said they'd merge Tradescape's best features with E*Trade Pro or whatever it was called. After seeing the resulting product, and the sluggish performance, I left for MB Trading. All I ever wanted (needed) was a relatively simple platform. I hope the TOS guys fare better than I did when Tradescape was bought out.