Newbie needs some help !

[Floppychicken]

Hello there,

I am currently looking for a decent front end (real-time quote system) to use for my tracking and trading of Equities both CAN and 'some' US.
Some time ago, I was using "Quotemedia" and they seemed pretty fair but that was quite a number of years ago....  So...

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good RTQ system ?  Also, I have just opened an account with "TradeFreedom".  Are those guys any good ?  Their commission schedule looks 'very reasonable', how is their execution ?

Any help, related to the above, or 'other', is greatly appreciated !!

/FC

[bryanmcn]

I use a service provided through ETrade by Reuters. Its free if you have more than 30 trades per quarter. You get real time quotes, level 2, charts, news etc.

[LuckyWon]

I believe that that your account with TradeFreedom gives you real time quote feeds.  If so Quotetracker is a great software that offers all sorts of graphing and technical analysis for free.  It does come with advertising but you can subscribe to get rid of the ads.

I looked at Tradefreedom a few years ago but settled on Interactive Brokers, mainly due to lower commissions.

[Victor]

LuckyWon, once upon a time I looked into IB and didn't think it was all that great because:
1) it seemed to require additional fees for everything, including quotes.  If you are going to use limit orders it's nice to know where the market is at. Depending on how many trades you do a month, it would add to your "per transaction" cost.  Maybe it's changed now??
2) while they seemed to offer every concievable market, when I dug deeper it looked like the country of origin restricted which markets you could play in.
3) my biggest concern was what would happen if the electronic systems went down (or your connection to them).  Even if cost is higher for phone orders at other brokers there's no real backup at IB.  Maybe that's changed too, its been a while since I looked into it.

Would appreciate it if you could expand on your experience with IB.

Thanks,

Victor

[LuckyWon]

Hi Victor,

I first started investing about 10 or so years ago, and at that time opened a brokerage account with my bank.   Not fully trusting myself, I still kept my RRSPs with my adviser.  I traded mostly US stocks and a few on the Canadian exchanges.  At that time I was paying about $25/trade online.  Since then I think that many of the fees have some down, but still the average about $10/trade.  I then acquired an interest in futures trading and that was how I found IB.

1) Yes they do have a fee for almost everything, but when you work it out I find it still much cheaper than any other online service.  They have a a min monthly fee of $10.  I subscribe to the the real time US market feed, which is approx $10 month so my fees are never less than $10 even if I don't perform any trades in a given month. The TSE datafeed fees are $6/month. I  use the feeds with QuoteTracker Software for charting and technical analysis for my futures trading.  So with out making any trades, the costs for both the US and TSE feeds are about $192/yr.  On top of that my average commission is about $2/trade.  The average SSP user here would probably perform about 40 trades a year within each portfolio.  At $2/trade that adds about $80/yr.  So total expenses with IB are about $242/yr.  Looking at the the website for Tradefreedom I think they offer about $9/trade?  So 40 trades/year would cost $360/yr, and then I don't know if TF has any other fees on top of that.
  Now I don't get the Canadian realtime feed.  Mostly because the only Canadian equities I play with are here with SSP.  I buy at market as close to the end of the trading day as possible.  But I still get real time quotes from my original online account with my bank.  I have kept that account because IB does not offer any RRSP accounts and has no plans to in the future as far as I can tell.

2)  I have had no problems getting access to US markets and Canadian markets.  Outside of that I can't comment as I don't trade outside these.  As far as FX I do receive feeds for other currencies but I haven't tried to trade anything other than the USD and CDN.

3)  Yes they are 100% electronic.  I have been with them for close to 4 years and have not had any problems making trades.  They have their TWS software that you can place trades with as well the ability to trade online in a web browser.  You do need to be careful as it can be easy to place a trade.  Make sure you don't have any kids or animals near your keyboard    That happened to me with an SSP trade.  I sold the wrong stock.  Fortunately it was down day and I bought it back later in the day for a lower price.  Here is a great example of the low commissions, both of those trades cost me $1 each (total of $2).

Overall I have been really happy with IB.  The fixed costs of having this account are probably about $192/yr plus your commissions.  The commissions are probably about $2 or less.

Happy to offer my IB experience for you Victor, just let me know if I can let you know more.

Cheers,
LuckWon

[Victor]

LuckWon,

I really appreciate the response!  Thanks.

I think I'll be looking for a new broker soon.  Returns have deteriorated lately and commish is consuming a greater proportion of the P/L.

For my own comfort level though I still think I'd like a broker I can call to execute.  Even if the cost for this is high.  I don't want to rely on my connection.  Power loss or connectivity loss could prove disasterous.  In the worst case you don't  want that happening at your broker's end!  The phone lines would be busy I'm sure.

I guess one way around this is to have your stop orders in the market when you put on new positions.

Anyone else care to comment on their brokerage experience?

Thanks again LuckyWon,

Victor