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I had an account with TH to trade emini exclusively perhaps 18 months
ago. Customer service was terrible and they had no phone backup at the
time. The TH Workstation was by far the best tool I have ever used for
scalping the emini - I could consistently enter limit orders (with one
click) to buy at the ask or sell at the bid eliminating all slippage
which with the low commissions made it a better deal to trade 5 lots of
emini than the full spoo. Because I traded other futures and required a
backup where I could offset if the TH system went down, I maintained
both the TH and my LeoWeb account. I closed the TH account when I
stopped trading the emini so actively.
I've been trading the emini a bit more these days and sorely miss the
speed with which I could enter/exit with the TH Workstation. I would
have to question the ability of any super deep discount firm to staff
phone lines with enough licensed brokers when the internet system goes
down. LeoWeb has been suffering from increasing outages recently but at
least I can get a broker on the phone when there is an outage.
What has been surprising to me is that since Refco acquired LFG and
LeoWeb, system reliability has actually deteriorated rather than
improving. Also, there have been no enhancements of significance to the
software in nearly 2 years. Would be interested in hearing experiences
with other futures internet order systems (not browser based) with a
high degree of uptime. I say not browser based, because I have tried
quite a number of browser based internet order systems for both futures
and stocks over the years, and never have I found any which come close
to the performance of installed software based order systems.
Earl
> Dom----- Original Message -----
> From: DH <catapult@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2000 5:10 PM
> Subject: [RT] Re: Timber Hill??
>
>
> > > they claim that their uptime is 99%.
> >
> > I sure hope it's better than that. The e-mini trades 24 hours a day,
5
> > days a week, which works out to over an hour of downtime a week.
> >
> > But the real problem, from what I hear, is how they handle your
orders
> > if the e-system does go down. They claim to have a phone backup but
I
> > hear it's like trying to get through to tech support at a software
> > company. Since they don't have any conventional phone
infrastructure,
> > you get all the customers at once trying to call a single number and
> > talk to some poor guy who isn't a real clerk in the conventional
sense
> > of the word. And, since their books are totally dependent on the
> > e-system, if it's down, the clerk probably won't even be able to
tell
> > you your position, let alone your fill price. And, to add insult to
> > injury, they charge you something like $30 for the call when THEIR
> > f***up is the reason you are calling.
> >
> > No thanks. I'd rather pay the bucks for a broker with a decent
backup
> > infrastructure. Commissions are chump change compared to a bad trade
> > because of broker problems. Imagine going into Thursday night not
> > knowing if you were long or short the Naz. :-)
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