Some ET members laugh at the idea of using TD Ameritrade for stocks. I believe, in part, it's because the jumping from screen to screen to place & monitor your orders, & because of the fixed cost but the reality is, why not using for larger size orders like 1k-2k shares plus? They no longer own the market making interests in Knight (which helps regarding the concern of trading against you & biased order routing), and they scan numerous market centers to fill your orders which greatly helps your fills for illiquide stocks--instead of causing the stock price to run away from you.
The reason I don't trade with them is, well 1, I don't day-trade equities that much, 2, they don't have the greatest IT or customer service department (but not as bad as IB), and 3, not priced great for options as that is what I do a lot of. Also, many experience data problems on high-volume opens. Couldn't get logged in on that huge down day in Jan where the Fed cut 75bp before the open. Caused me to miss a huge opportunity.
i currently have 30k in a TD ameritrade account ... my average trade size is 1-2k shares of common, and maybe 20-30 option contracts .... averaging about 3 option trades and 5 common stock trades per week..... should i be trading elsewhere... reccomendations? (of somewhat user friendly platforms)
I have my personal retail account with TD Ameritrade and an IRA. I have no complaints. The web site has gone down a few times but that only matters if you are active trading with it, which would be silly. In my opinion, they have all the fundamental analysis tools you could ever need. Pretty crappy charting software but it works for what I need it for.
I have an AT account, but I do not use my AT account for trading. I use other brokers that have low per share commissions for my trading. I use my AT account for only long term investing because of the high ticket charges. Even if I want to take a 5000 share position in a stock, There are several reasons I would rather try it at a half cent per share rather than trying it at a $9.99 ticket charge.
When do you suppose TD will correct the time to coincide with daylight saving? Must be a couple weeks now and their clock is still wrong. Don't they have a janitor? That's it!!!! I'm going to call them up and ask to speak to the janitor. Back in the day a highly paid professional janitor would wind the dials and get the clocks to the right time. Old chinese saying: Man with two clocks never know what time it is.
I had a watch that only went ..tick...tick...tick. It was losing time. I took in in for repair. The old man clock repairer looked inside the back of the watch with a flashlight then shined the light directly into the watch face and said "Ve haf vays of making you tock!" I loved that watch. (Sigh) but I moved away and forgot all about it. Then about six years later I found the repair claim check and on my next visit back home I brought in the claim check and asked for the watch. I seriously doubted he would still have the watch. But a few minutes later he came out of the repair room and said it would be ready Thursday.
I agree if you want to average into a position, but what if you want to place the trade all at once? I also agree that flipping from screen to screen to send & monitor an order is a disadvantage. I have several different brokers, including TD Ameritrade, and use them for their advantages. To put it bluntly, IMO, they do an EXCELLENT job at getting large block orders filled* (better than Thinkorswim & much better than IB); this is VERY important--else you're gonna chase the stock price away. *Do others agree with this assessment?
ive been doing alot of call and put writing ... and in 10-20 contract orders, that 20 or so dollars plus the per contract fee kinda hurts ... what broker should i look towards for better fees for someone like myself who only writes 15-20 contracts at a time?
My streamer has the correct (daylight) time. Which version of java are you using? I think 1.5 needed a patch to know about the new daylight time rules. I run 1.6.