Berney; RE:" What CyberBrokerz Do You Use ?"
>How do you like Datek ?
I use three on-line brokerz, Berney. The IRA is a small account that's on Discover/Lombard; I use it for short-term trading of stocks only, without margins or options of any kind (since it is tax-free). They have real-time quotes and good facilities, including an option look-up that I use a lot. A 1000s market order is about $15 bucks, and limit orders around $20 I think. They are slow, but sure. They have a timer on their server, so if you don't ping them from time-to-time, you gotta sign back on again. They have really good security, though.
DATEK is quite fast and simple, and excellent for NASDAQ stocks; not so fast with NYSE/AMEX. They do not do options. I use the DATEK real-time quote page as my primary 'stock watch' screen. Sometimes their quotes get fouled up - especially the high and low of the day, I assume that their 'raw feed' has all the brokers' data-entry errors - so I usually check RTQuotes on Discover/Lombard if there is something that I really want to know - like the BIDxASK sizes etc. Many times I am glad that I have both services. The DATEK account is about 3x the size of the IRA and I use it for trading and investing stocks.
DATEK is cheap - $10 bucks a trade, and really simple. They used to have server/bandwidth problems, but recently they've improved.
My big account is on E*TRADE - I've been with them for many years now, through all their growing pains ( and all my trading pains :) I keep all my investments in LEAP form there, and do all my options trading on E*TRADE. I use their BRIEFING.COM news throughout the day. It's ok - there are probably better services for options, since that is all I do on them now, ever since I converted all the buy-and-hold stuff to LEAPS last year. I have a love-hate feeling about E*TRADE, but I'm too lazy to move all or part of the account over to a cut-rate options cyberbroker. Jury recommended PBS to me.
I keep the fourth browser window on NASDAQ's site, and SI, and use it as my 'surf' window if I want to go somewhere else on the WWWeb - from time-to-time I check MyYahoo where I have a massive construction of all the major indices and sector indices loaded; they have great news, too. Jurgen uses MS-Investor like I use Yahoo, I think.
I keep the fifth browser window on QUOTE.COM's interactive JAVA chart generator, which has free RTCharts of the indices, including (tunable, intra-day candlesticks) and delayed charts for stocks (and option prices, in candlestick form, which is quite useful). This is my primary trading monitor window. I flip back-and-forth between this RTChart generator and the DATEK RTQuote list of stocks that I've loaded: LEFT=DATEK, then E*TRADE, then LOMBARD, then NASDAQ/SI/YAHOO, then QUOTE.COM, and finally...
I run a sixth window with METASTOCK, which contains all my charts and all the magic lines (^_^) I draw all over them. It's linked to the Reuters data service over the 'Net, but it's an end-of-day kinda update that's available about 1800 NewYork time.
Bob (IT) had a fancy RTQuote hookup on his trading station, I think. I'm not sure what the other dudes are running, Berney - so I'd kinda like to hear how they set up their rigs, too !
BTW, I use an IBM ThinkPad 760ED with either ISDN or Modem (or Nokia GSM wireless if I'm mobile) - so the hardware here is simply a laptop and an HP 12C calculator. The backup rig is a Compaq Armada 7730MT laptop.
What are you running; what service(s) do you use ?
-Steve |
