I also just opened an account with MB Trading. My overall impression is that it is an wonderful broker, but ONLY IF YOU DAY TRADER!. The good points are 1) they have a great customer service-they answer the phone promptly and are very friendly. 2) The trading system (RealTick III) is amazing. Everything is at your fingertips, you can place an order off the MM screen with little, if any typing, and execution is instantaneous. Just on order entry alone, you can dance around anyone using DATEK.
However, if you using margin and you are going to hold overnight, I would recommend you go with Datek. First, you have to call them to tell them that you will be caring a short position overnight. Since I do most of my trading near the close, the last thing I want to do is call them! Second, their computation of buying power is completely confusing. So confusing that even when I call MB Trading, they cannot figure it out! I've had two customer reps tell me that they will figure it out and call me back. I am still waiting on both of them.
Finally, which ties into the buying power issue, I shorted a stock on Friday with them (on margin), covered it this morning, but the software will not let me use the freed up money as buying power!! In addition, it appears that you cannot use 2x your cash for overnight positions, it is more like 1.75x. To top it off, I (and the reps at MB Trading) still have no idea what my account balance is!
My initial impression is that MB Trading is great if you only daytrade and never carry a position overnight. If you are a positon/short-term trader, stick with DATEK.
Please Peter, fix the system so that it works at the opening!!! I'd be willing to pay you a higher commission!!!
Michael
EDIT - to make matters worse, MB Trading will not let you use margin to trade the same stock you held overnight. So if I held MSFT long overnight, sold it the next day and wanted to go short MSFT, I could not use funds I had invested long in MSFT! |
