This is a heads up on some of my past experiences with Trademaven. Trademaven had a total service meltdown for the last half of February and into early March of 2006. They blamed Transact and moved their accounts to Mann Financial. They didn't bother to send me an email saying they were moving my accounts. I found it out through the grapevine. After my accounts got to Mann my commission went from $3.80 a contract to $200.00 a contract. Trademaven did not have offer to set up daily email P/L's so I didn't find out for a week when the first statement arrived by mail. I called Trademaven to get it fixed but it didn't happen so I called Mann myself and got it fixed 2 days later. I then had to call Trademaven again to tell them that they were still charging 32% more commissions than was agreed. That time they called Mann to fix it. When you talk to them it seems like they could care less on the adminstrative end. The next suprise was that I starting getting someone else's statements in the mail. I called Trademaven again and got the blah, blah blah, we will take care of it. 2 more weeks go by and I'm still getting this guy's statements so I track the right person down at one of Mann Financial's many offices and got it squared away. The biggest bitch with Trademaven was when they switched to Mann Financial the margin went from $500.00 to $2000.00 per contract and again they did not send out a notice to let me know that fact. I have been trading for a long time and I have to say hands down that Trademaven is the worst brokerage I have EVER dealt with. Technical support was generally fine but the rest of the company was pathetic. I had finally had it and went to another broker and have had much better results. If you are looking for a broker or trading platform I would in no way recommend them based on my experience.
And Jeremy is no longer in the day to day activities for TM. I have had a rough time with Trademaven also during this period, so I am moving on sorry to say.
I have had a few log in problems the last few days - much better than problems I had a couple of weeks ago. I just do not have confidence in the whole program anymore and I have three separate systems that I have to babysit when there are tech problems - that is no fun. I really like to backtest mechanical trade system concepts with TM - it is very easy to use so that is probably the only thing I will use TM for from here on out. I had asked in a different thread if anyone was using the Genesis Trade Navigator platform but there was not much of any reply, so I am looking at; Button-Trader through IB NinjaTrader through maybe VCap Futures Red Sky's set up or just go back once and for all with XTrader
I usevCap and Ninja Trader and love both of them. vCap has exellent customer service, Ninja Trader's a great program, and the data from vCap is great. Commissions are very very competitive.
I had the same frustrations with Transact/Trademaven in February/March. At the end of March, I switched to JR Futures, which is an IB for PFG. PFG offers Trademaven (with datafeed from PFG), but they call it BestDirectFast. It is exactly the same (just marketed under a different name). JR charges $3.90 R/T with $500/contract day margins. They've been very helpful and no problems in account service (daily statements e-mailed and everything has been working as represented). I didn't want to give up the ease of use with TradeMaven, and I'm glad that I found that I could stay with with the platform, without the problems in working with TM directly.
Unfortunately, I know a trader that is fighting with PFG/JR Futures over a stop-limit order problem while using TM from the last fed meeting day - so far zero resolution of the problem for him. I also had the same problem on the same day with a different broker and TM, but I was able to get the broker to see things my way and the problem was rectified. I just consider myself lucky on this one.
Ever since TM got the bright idea to do everything on their own, it's been a mess there as these posts on ET keep pointing out. I was with TM before their transition, but as soon as I heard what the plans were, I was out. There used to be a TM rep posting on the forums here (this was when the announcement was made about the dramatic changes) and now they are nowhere to be found here.
Sandygray, Have you had any reliability issues using this TM for PFG platform ? Does it lag or diconnect often ?