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I am concerned. Looking for advice. How good is scottrade, compared to other companies like choicetrade, ameritrade. It seems that when I place a sell order it never reaches the ticker. Is that normal. I have heard they lock you out sometimes. I am thinking about going else where, should I.
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Good question skpasch. I have had Scottrade for 1 year now. No big problems except for the e-check company that they use. There was some sort of security breach in their system, and now you can only wire funds in for a $20 fee or drop funds off at the branch. THis was a few weeks ago so I dont know if you can send an e-check now. I will check though.
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Been with Scottrade since Aug 2005 and no problems with them at all. Orders are filled quickly. They recently added "Trade Ideas" stock scanning program which is a $400 program that now comes free with their "elite platform". They added that in November about two months after I had already bought a subscription to Trade Ideas. If you have not used Trade Ideas then be prepared to learn how to set the "filters" so that it only gives you what you want other wise you'll have 2000 stocks to have to figure out which ones to buy. I think Scottrade is the only national broker using Trade Ideas platform. Hedge funds use it so you know it's good.
Scottrade's supposedly award winning service lacks a lot especially when you need to call them for questions about your account. You will be on hold for at least 10 minutes. They need to hire more staff in their call center. I have nothing else to compare to other brokers so perhaps this is normal:)
Oh yeah the $7.00 comission are cheap especially considering you don't need to buy any additional third party "candlestick" chart tools. That all comes with you Scottrade account.
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quote:Originally posted by skpasch: I am concerned. Looking for advice. How good is scottrade, compared to other companies like choicetrade, ameritrade. It seems that when I place a sell order it never reaches the ticker. Is that normal. I have heard they lock you out sometimes. I am thinking about going else where, should I.
I've had Scottrade for years but if you're thinking about trading pennies I would recommend going with Dustoff's suggestion or Choicetrade ($5 commission, but I dont think you get Level 2 quotes).
Scottrade's $7 + 1/2% commission they tack on to pennies/pinks/other stocks under $1/share will eat into your profit.
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The sucky thing about scottrade is that I want to get the scottrade elite, but you need to have at least 25k or maintain 25k in your account to have that.
-------------------- Learning The Way Of Life....
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thanks for the replies. One last question, when I place a sell should it register on the ticker at the price I ask. The last 2 sells haven't and since I am fairly new at this game I am not sure if it is supposed to. I thought it was. Thanks for all the advice
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If you sell your stock with a MARKET order, you're going to get whatever the market decides to give you. Let's say you own 10,000 shares of XXX, a fake Nasdaq stock. Let's say XXX trades at 20 bucks a share. If you place a market order to sell all 10,000 shares, and the bid price of XXX is 20 bucks, you might sell 1000 at 20 bucks, the bid price may move down to 19.99, then suddenly you might sell 2500 shares, then the bid price might move down to 19.95, 100 shares sell, bid moves to 19.90, more shares sell, blah blah. Eventually your last bit of shares may end up selling at 19.30..or whatever, because your market order drove the bid down.
If you want to buy and sell at a specific price you have to use LIMIT orders.
There are also stop-loss, stop-limit orders too I believe, but I've never messed with them, and not all brokerages support them.
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i like scottrade, have several accounts with them and have been pretty happy.
a few caveats though:
* their recent security breach with echeck is troubling.
* they are expensive to buy canadian securities, and you have to do it over the phone - i think about $25/trade
* some foreign securities you simply can't buy with them. for example a year or two ago i tried to buy NAM.AX over the phone - not possible. i also tried to buy EDV.TO warrants over the phone a year or so back - also, no go: not possible.
* the 1/2% fee tacked onto the $7 flat rate would get expensive and eat into profits if you are for example like keithsan and like to do a lot of quick in and outs for 10-15% range. i generally hold long so not a real issue for me.
* generally buy and sell executions are pretty quick. about once every 3 months though i have a buy order that should have executed, fail to execute. for example suppose i have an "all or none" buy order for 5k NMKT at .272. have had it happen that the stock price will dip down to my range, several 5k buy orders at .27 will execute, but then it will jump back to .28-.29 without my order ever triggering. i don't know why several .27 buy orders would trigger, when my .272 buy order of the exact same size would not.
as for the ticker questions: i often trade in relatively thinly traded stocks, and place buy and sell orders at points between the bid and ask on a wide spread. my bid never seems to show up with scottrade. fore example if JMIH is .22 x .29 and i place a buy order for 10k at .23 - the bid still remains at .22 on the ticker. not sure why, if this is a scottrade thing, or because i only placed a 10k share order, or what...
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quote:Originally posted by blue_in_MI: i like scottrade, have several accounts with them and have been pretty happy.
a few caveats though:
* their recent security breach with echeck is troubling.
* they are expensive to buy canadian securities, and you have to do it over the phone - i think about $25/trade
* some foreign securities you simply can't buy with them. for example a year or two ago i tried to buy NAM.AX over the phone - not possible. i also tried to buy EDV.TO warrants over the phone a year or so back - also, no go: not possible.
* the 1/2% fee tacked onto the $7 flat rate would get expensive and eat into profits if you are for example like keithsan and like to do a lot of quick in and outs for 10-15% range. i generally hold long so not a real issue for me.
* generally buy and sell executions are pretty quick. about once every 3 months though i have a buy order that should have executed, fail to execute. for example suppose i have an "all or none" buy order for 5k NMKT at .272. have had it happen that the stock price will dip down to my range, several 5k buy orders at .27 will execute, but then it will jump back to .28-.29 without my order ever triggering. i don't know why several .27 buy orders would trigger, when my .272 buy order of the exact same size would not.
as for the ticker questions: i often trade in relatively thinly traded stocks, and place buy and sell orders at points between the bid and ask on a wide spread. my bid never seems to show up with scottrade. fore example if JMIH is .22 x .29 and i place a buy order for 10k at .23 - the bid still remains at .22 on the ticker. not sure why, if this is a scottrade thing, or because i only placed a 10k share order, or what...
Scottie is usually a pretty quick fill, and transactions *do* show up on the "Quick Quote" screen; however, in addition to what Blue notes, they also have fairly regular periods when some data feeds are bad, i.e., you pull up a quote on a given penny-play, and what you see is *not* accurate, and the only way you now is either from other, posting board members or you somehow deduce it from delayed quotes.
I'll keep Scottie but also have another account, probably Choicetrade but maybe Lowtrade. One thing I've learned is having more than one account is--if not a must--at least very helpful...
-------------------- Nashoba Holba Chepulechi Adventures in microcapitalism...
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also, as posted elsewhere, Scottie will kill ya on "geek plays": if it's not rigidly "by the book" or plain as your nose? They'll stall and drag their feet so long--or stop trading--that you'll lose dough one way or the other...
Ameritrade, for one, is more realistic about "grey areas"...
-------------------- Nashoba Holba Chepulechi Adventures in microcapitalism...
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scottrades 1/2% for penny stocks will eat ya alive, as stated above.
-------------------- Always do your own due diligence. My posts are neither a buy, sell, or hold recommendation; and express only my personal opinion. Please consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
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BTW do you know why some micropennies don't have L2s or even bid/ask prices in streamer? even when the price changes and trades are clearly taking place, and volume has been huge? (e.g. PAIM)
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Sometimes Pink market makers do not send L2 or last sale info to the brokers, on certain stocks.
Ameritrade is supposed to soon have L2'S on the pinkies as part of the package in Apex 2, I think.. Haven't seen it yet..Will call to clarify..
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I think there might be something about being under $25-100k in equitys or cash...
I have been with um for a long time, so I don't keep up on what the criteria is on a new account..The last account I opened for my daughter went thru without a hitch..We keep 3 accounts.
Ask them if after a period of time and trading you advance in services to Apex 2. That was my understanding if ya go in with minimum $2000.00
Best to go in with $25,000.00 then you can margin...BUT DON'T OPEN A MARGIN ACCOUNT IF YA DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE DOING,,THEY CAN RUIN YOU!!!BIG TIME!
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for Pennies use Choicetrade... low commissions, don't charge you if there is no activity , great customer service, etc... but most important is they allow you to put stop/losses on pennies (all pennies under $5 including pinksheets) ... no extra fee's on pennies or pinks like scottrade does... but the stop/losses alone makes it all worth while especially for traders who can't monitor their accounts/stocks constantly..
-------------------- Let the world change you... And you can change the world.
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Machiavelli... I see that a whole bunch of you guys like choicetrade for pennies... have any of you guys used both choice and ameritrade? any difference besides commission? Can you put stop/loss orders on pennies with ameritrade? Doesn't really matter though as I can monitor pretty much constantly...
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As far as i know Ameritrade doesn't allow stop/losses or at least i havent heard anyone say they allow it.. so to me paying more then double the commission compared to Choicetrade is not even worth it if they dont allow stop/losses on pennies... and believe me if you trade alot commissions can eat alot of your bankroll over time.. much like putting up ante's in a poker game... every hand...
-------------------- Let the world change you... And you can change the world.
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