I am searching for a good online discount broker for daytraders. Features I am looking for are
1- Market order executions typically within 10 seconds
2- Fill reports within 30 seconds
3- Real time streaming quotes for a group of stocks
4- Enter orders on same page as quotes displayed
5- Commissions as low as possible, average 10-20 round trips a day
6- Any size lot, usually trade 100s but w/ Yahoo at $200 sometimes trade just 10 shares at a time. Try to use about $2000-$4000 capital per trade.
7- Ability to 'flip' in a single order, i.e. if I am long 100 shares ABC stock, enter an order to sell 200 shares and reverse my position instantly.
I have paper traded using real time quotes at various sites (one free quote at a time)and have made a KILLING (retire in a year?) buying at the ask and selling at the bid with my strategy (assuming my brokerage could perform as described above).
I have tried this strategy in the real world using Ameritrade, but the inherent delays in their system make it very difficult to daytrade. There are several web pages to go through for each trade entry, taking as long as 3 minutes. Even worse, sometimes I don't receive fill reports for up to a half hour. On paper I may have made 3 additional profitable round trips in that time frame, but because I haven't received a report I don't dare just place orders blindly. They do have a phone number I can call to trade and get fill reports, but I have found on paper I may be in and out a stock, maybe even twice, in the time it takes to get a trader on the phone. Bottom line, the time delays make day trading a losing game on Ameritrade!
I have been looking at Web Street Securities. They seem to have the features I have described above. However, when I have been in checking out their website, it seems their software may have some bugs. Anybody on the thread used Webstreet, or can anyone suggest an online broker?
Thanks,
sm |
