SIPC I stand corrected. Doesn't sound right that you could not trade and everything is tied up for months. I was always told all of these brokers are only a platform to allow your trades. The neither hold or control your assests. They make their money from commissions which are also paid to them by the financial account they use to handle everyone's funds. Why would our assests stay tied up for months?
We offer both Sterling and Laser. Sterling we can offer on a retail, SIPC insured account, and Laser only prop. We are geared more for the active day trader. Anyone interested please go to www.JCTRADINGGROUP.com or call us at 248.406.3250. Thank You. Jeff
Hello there SE MI buddy. I am pleased and shocked to see a prop firm in the area. I'd be interested as to what type of services an undercapitalized part time trader would be available at your firm. I'm employed full time so remote would be essential but I am very interested to hear about your firm since we have virtually no trading community here.
I could write a book about all the things Schwab made a mess of in closing down CyberTrader. They had seven years to figure out how to do it, and that still wasn't enough time. I spoke last week with a Schwab executive, discussed with him some of the worst of the many, many problems, ranging from trading limitations to inadequate records on the backend, to the absolute disaster that is the SS Pro Positions tab. He pledged that they were going to get this thing fixed, so I arranged with him to keep my account open at Schwab for a few months, continue using SS Pro's charting functions (the one part of the system they didn't screw up) at no charge during that time, and I'll use another brokerage to actually trade and do record keeping. If they actually do get things mostly repaired, I'd be happy to go back. As it stands today, though, SS Pro is unusable for the volume of trading I'm accustomed to doing every day. I wonder if they're getting enough in consolidation savings to make up for the commissions they lost from all the CyberTraders they ran off. The question I've been trying to answer for the past 1 1/2 weeks is which other brokerage to use. At the moment I lean toward Cobra. Any other suggestions would be welcome. I need to do something quickly though, because this enforced vacation from trading is boring.
I too am looking at Cobra...but they don't offer per trade pricing (only per share pricing). I average 5,000 per trade, with sometimes getting up near 20,000 shares....The per share pricing would kill me. With that in mind, I've been looking at Noble, MasterTrader, and SpeedTrader. I'm leaning towards Noble, as the customer service has been spectacular. The downside of Noble is they don't have the direct feed on DJ into their News Feed box (they use RTT)...but they are willing to compensate or reimburse you for an actual prescription with Dowjonesnews if you hit certain certain trade volumes.
I have now looked over at least ten Brokers. I am so frustrated. One doesn't offer checking, another doesn't offer streaming news, another doesn't offer programable columns in the Open Position window. I have yet to find one broker with everything CT had. I find it a little hard to believe that I had the best Broker, and didn't even know it. I have talked to several Schwab Techs who "claim" they are working on all of the problems, and plan to add several of the missing colums back to the program. The techs claim they hear us and are taking notes on all issues. One tech has admitted to me that they lost several customers over this fiasco. I believe they will repair the program someday. Just no telling how long that will be. For now, it looks like I am stuck with Schwab. It doesn't make much sense to me to move to another broker if it wasn't comparable or better then what you have.
I had to laugh when I read what you said about not knowing you had the best broker all along. I think quite a few of us didn't realize what we had until Schwab took it away. And I think they lost more than just a few customers. I've suggested to more than one of the "other" brokers that they send Schwab a nice bottle of wine and a thank-you card for the unexpected early Christmas gift of new, ex-CyberTrader, clients they've received over the last two weeks. The galling thing is not just that the CT Pro we lost, while not perfect, was very good, and, more importantly, we all had spent months and years fine-tuning our personal platforms to do just what we wanted in the most efficient way for our individual trading styles. Now we have to start over, and, in many ways, will have to do so without many of the features we'd grown accustomed to. That's why I'm keeping a foot in the door at Schwab. But, to trade in volume, I really have to go somewhere else for now, since (1) there's no feasible way to keep track of a dozen or more simultaneous long/short postions in the SS Pro Account Detail window, and (2) after-hours trading, which is bread-and-butter, is a disaster with Schwab.
I let my wife read your post and her remark is that it seems all ex- CT members, are are complaining about similiar issues. One tech did tell me that changes are made by the amount of request from traders. You need to make sure to address your concerns with the Tech Support department. They have a direct line. 1-800 433-9196.
ericy, Did you find out what the minimum requirements are for keeping a Schwab account open? I have been told two different requirements fron Cust Serv.