CyberTrader Rep, you haven't posted in a while... Is there any chance you could enlighten us with any updates to the integration. It is obvious that shorting through ECN's is a huge issue, but wondered if there was any truth to a post that I read sighting Schwabs website that it states " all orders are routed through UBS even if you are direct access ".
Hi, I am becoming a pretty active trader and am evaluating platforms. CT seems to be rather expensive and I really don't trust companies who undermine a platform and their former customers. Most of my traders are under 500 shares. Is there any reason to use CT rather than NobleTrading? Is there any other platform I should consider. IB seems a bit unstable from the reviews I have read. Thanks. Rich
I wouldn't put much trust in the IB reviews. Anyone can come on here and post anything. No doubt some people have had bad experiences, but it is by far the most used platform among ETers. IB is clearly not for beginners, and they do not specialize in handholding. CT by contrast has always had fantastic off the charts customer service, provided by great people who actually know exactly what they're doing. The main attraction of CT is the excellent charting, very well done Lev II boxes that give you your position in real time and available shares to short and the great order entry interface. As you can see from this thread, there is a lot of upset among users over changes to the platform. Clearly it will not be as good, but the charting should be pretty much the same. I've never used Noble, so I can't comment on their platform.
Rich, I would think you have already looked at the list of "broker ratings" here on ET. The number of ratings for each of the brokers may be an indication of which brokers to read the ratings. I just now looked at the list and noticed there are not many with a number of ratings that exceed 30. A high number of ratings may well indicate some good things but it also means when a broker has problems we are likely going to hear about the problems here on ET. I like IB combined with Quotetracker for charts.
Thanks for the advice Catoosa. Yes, I did look through the ratings, and there doesn't seem to be any standout anywhere. If I am going to place large amounts of money somewhere, I would be very worried if there was no customer support or if there is not enough financial stability in a company, which is why I am a bit bewildered as to what to do. Also, the more I look things over, the more concerned I am that the odds are stacked against the individual player. It almost feels like I am playing "against the house" and the house has configured the game so that it is almost impossible to win in the long run. So I just keep researching, and hoping that I find a good answer to my needs. Thanks again. Rich
Why do you think that you are playing against the house and that it would be 'almost impossible to win in the long run'. Curious as to why you feel that way?
Hi guys, Thanks for the replies. I will look more into IB, but I don't think I am going to be comfortable placing a large sum of money with a firm that is not responsive. It is a tough problem since the brokers that are responsive do not have good trading systems. The best of both worlds, from my limited experience, appears to be Scottrade, but I do not think Scottrade has adequate trading facilities, plus they give poor interest on their sweep accounts. I think that the insiders see much more about what is going on than the outsiders. This appears to give them a very substantial edge. I encountered similar problems when I was playing online poker. There seems to be all sorts of ways to get an edge with the control of appropriate choke points, colusion, money, etc. I may get lucky from time to time, if by accident I was on the right side of the trade, but this would be more of a question of luck. As with online poker, the whole game is dependent upon newcomers entering into the game with loose money that is easy for the seasoned players to grab, but I think that I don't want to play the game unless I know that there is a level playing field. This, of course, begins (but does not end), with a secure, reliable, high performance, easy to use, trading platform. As of yet, I haven't found this minimum requirement. But I will keep looking. Rich
If your looking at ScottTrade, I would have to say that SSP would be alot better. You will still get the same support from the Cyber people. (support is not changing) As far as your advantage thing your talking about. I am not sure what your talking about. Do the big guys have a better advantage over the small guy? I guess you could argue that, but I would only say they have a 10% at best advantage over us. That number is even stretching it for me, heck I think I have a better advantage then them half the time. Its a hard business and you have to do tons of homework. You must learn to have great discipline, along with many other things. This can be achieved, but the resonsibility of all trades lay on you 99.99% of the time. For the last 6 months I am averaging 8.67 winning days out of 10. And my gains for those days out way my down days by far. I would probably have a better winning ratio if I did'nt make dumb trade decisions every once in awhile. It happens though because we are human, the key is to work towards making them few and far between. The success of traders ultimately relies on the trader themself! The fact that a majority of Americans will work 40+ hours a week to just bring home $300 to $500 a week and I can do that in minutes. Its hard for me to complain about disadvantages.