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Yes, I use TradeStation Securities as a real time (different from online, by
the way) broker.
It is not a perfect brokerage.
It has low commissions - penny a share to 500 shares, half penny a share
thereafter.
It is far more reliable than Terra Nova and latter's many affiliated
brokerages.
It has nice people who are also very competent.
It has been converting to its own direct exchange data feeds - with few
problems (other than the screwed up CME, but that is the CME itself, not
TSS). It still uses the slow and sometimes unreliable S&P Comstock data
feed for NYSE, as many brokerages still do - but that will be changed in the
months head, IMHO.
It is currently converting away from Bear Sterns as its clearing house,
becoming self clearing. That should address, eventually, the often puzzling
list of stocks that cannot be borrowed or shorted (that is a serious Bear
Sterns deficiency), and address its currently unacceptable trade accounting
(also a serious Bear Sterns deficiency).
TS7 itself is a good tool overall, for all of its obvious flaws. Still
needing to be improved? Order execution functions; drawing tools; hot
lists; limitations on scanning and filtering; news and news functions. TS6
and TS7 have already been very significantly improved over the past 18
months, and that pace seems to be continuing.
Point to above three paragraphs? TSS and TS are being rapidly improved,
good as they currently are, without the frequent outage and bugs that come
with Terra Nova and RealTick "improvements" and patches.
For trading in equities and related futures, TS is better than any of the 50
or so alternative packages I've tested and used over the years. Cannot
comment about TS for trading options, because I never trade options. Cannot
comment about TS for trading commodities and other contract based futures
because I stopped trading those after too many losses, before I began using
TS.
Things I like the most about TS/TSS are: its people - no arrogance like
with Terra Nova, etal; its honesty; and its well managed (few bugs) rate of
rapid improvements.
Vince Heiker
Flower Mound, Texas
-----Original Message-----
From: Gray, Gabriel [mailto:Gabriel.Gray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 11:37 AM
To: Alex Matulich; omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Help choosing an online broker
Does anyone actually use Tradestation as an online broker? If so, I
would be curious about the same issues.
Gabriel
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