| Lonnie - Datek's big strength, in my opinion, is the speed and quality of execution (once you get your order placed) in listed stocks. Your order is executed over SuperDOT, usually in seconds. However, I have recently started trading the QQQ, and that takes as much as 20 seconds, which I can't stand for the kind of moves I play. Their handling of stop market orders recently has been flawless, which is real important if you have to leave the trade unattended. The major advantage of IB, other than the $10 round trip, is, I believe, that the trading software is resident on your computer, therefore avoiding the miserably slow page loading Datek suffers from. The IB software is ridiculously easy to use. My impression from corresponding with very experienced traders on the day trading thread is that IB is the broker you use before you're ready to graduate to true direct access, like CyberCorp. Datek customer service is generally fabulous if you're a so-called Elite customer, over $25K and 20 trades a month. It sucks for anybody else. I just opened a margin account with IB, which went very fast: maybe 20 minutes to do the paperwork on-line and take their trading knowledge test, and the account was accepted the next working day. Moving my IRA will be a slower proposition. My prior experience moving from Fido to Datek was that it took three weeks. I notice someone else advised you to get a separate for-pay data service. That is absolutely essential. Permit me to plug the one I use, www.nextrend.com, $80 a month for their top-of-the line service. Nine servers, very easy to learn and use, very high reliability, and acceptably low data latency in my experience. Best of luck. - Mike |
