Saturday, July 15, 2006

Ameritrade Sucks But I Love the Streamer

Today I placed an order to cover my QQQQ short at $35.80. This was 1 cent above the low price of the day. Just as I did so, Ameritrade's servers crashed - the order was not accepted and when I tried to log-in again, I couldn't even get the login page. From reports on the Yahoo website, all of Ameritrade's customers were affected. Eventually I did cover - I missed a couple of good opportunities after I got back on and finally closed out at $35.95. The difference is $375. I have seriously considered moving my account to Interactive Brokers in the past. But I really liked the Ameritrade interface and so decided not to. Also for orders of more than 1000 shares Ameritrade is cheaper. The big advantage of IB is that you can trade futures as well. I think I may now make the move and keep the Ameritrade account for the sake of the charts as well as keeping the Roth IRA there. I haven't gone long yet, but based on the model will likely do so on Monday.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Switch to OptionsXpress.com -- it has futures too. Interface is better than Ameritrade anyway. I use them and have done so since 2002 or so. Also, they have been and still are a great investment at their current share prices. Check out their ROE and no debt.