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I had an on-again off-again relationship with Buttontrader for a long time and it miffs me a bit that they didn't do what was needed to fix their code, since the software was pretty important to a core group of people who bought and used it for a very long time, supporting their business. It's...

That was a very bad/long and surprising outage, one that for me, required some sort of email or notification from IB explaining what was going on. Accordingly, I'll be pulling some funds from there as I'm paranoid about IB a bit and I tend to overtrade over there anyway. :)

I don't feel like my lone opinion on IB is a pot shot but more of expressing my sense of not wanting to be in the same boat with a lot of highly leveraged active traders if we have a REAL black swan market disruption. 2008 and on was not that. Yes, IB held up pretty well in 2008. But given the...

Not knowing how much money you are talking about or your trading style ..... Just my opinion of course, but I am uncomfortable with IB's business model -- lots of active traders margined up (as demonstrated during Swiss currency crash, IB can absorb losses from that); you might not want to be...

My condolences to the people with negative account balances. You may have screwed up to an extent in having too large of a position but I still feel badly for you. My rule with the futures is to always assume that I am liable for the full contract value with my positions; I think Black Swan...

I understand the removal of the broker rankings by the site creators. It was fairly useless anyway given the varying experience level and reporting ability of us reviewers, along with the brokers themselves changing. Finding the right brokerage is a potentially long journey of trial and error...

Years of trading have evolved me to a "dumbed-down" (actually, hard-won technique drawn from painful experience) approach which is, to scale in long after weakness (trickily, avoiding buying during panic selling) and scale out into strength. This obviously doesn't always work in the short run...

For me, AT only works if I use a big enough time frame, as I do not like to get hacked up. Given that, TOS might be okay to use except that, do they even have the tools/interface to accomplish that? The one thing I like about TD/TOS over IB is their financial position as they are filled with...

It's weird, but the exact thing happened to me with TS, including them moving in next door, which I thought was a little over the top. Of course, everything changed when I found out that they were hooked up with inter-dimensional aliens bent on dominating the swiss Franc to finance their...

There is mainly only one black swam that is not an opportunity and that is the nuking of a major city, probably by terrorists or, a nuclear war. Extremely unlikely hopefully but the components of that are out there. I try and disregard that one also ...

I'm not involved in real estate but it is hard to imagine that owning rental properties is anything other than a good investment from here on, as long as your/their capital/debt situation doesn't force selling in another meltdown situation.

If there was an --unlikely I know -- ill-timed overall market meltdown right at your LOC orders time, wouldn't it be possible for a large amount of your orders to get executed? Then again, my understanding of LOC orders is "limited" as are the details on yours. No offense, but having funds...

If anyone is looking for a bubble to short, it's probably over at the Russell 2000. There are some vulnerabilities in the top 10 weighted companies in the QQQ/NQ but they don't have horrendous valuations and do have some dividends now plus, everyone loves and uses their products. AAPL's...

I would do this manually, not in any auto mode. Why - you (i) don't want to have a standing (or even auto induced) order out there at 5% below the market as you risk buying into a true black swan event, probably terrorist related (use your worst imagination) or some "act of God" that knocks out...

Thanks abattia - I'm mainly interested in what it looks like 20-50 points below the market price; 80-200 ticks. I have a hard time visualizing why anyone would have standing buy orders, especially in size, that far down though I guess they could have stop losses bracketed to them.

Not concerned about grind downs, just the doomsday that won't be happening. I tend to manage risk with very conservative position sizing and not close-in stops - my trading tactics are a hybrid of day/medium term. The grind down I would view as more of a buying op at some point unless I already...

Thanks RedDuke. Nope, not staying home! :) Yes, not sure about the puts and I'm not a real options fan anyway. Yes, my premise in the worst-case scenario is that the markets would close within minutes, would not reopen for quite a while and when they did reopen, there would be a huge gap...

Not sure what your problem with IB is, since I have had none re the application process, as detailed as it is. I think though, that if you are comfortable with their financial strength and business transparency, that they are hard to beat for products offered, executions, commissions, uptime...

Thanks gmst - That is extreme and I don't expect it to happen at all. Still, would rather not get wiped out if it does - it just seems a little too possible to me. But, my disaster stop is 50 points down and that is kind of my threshold for whether or not there are typically any standing...

Thanks JohnHar - I'm talking strictly about a situation -- that I won't even discuss here; fill in your own scenario -- where something happens that will shut the markets down within minutes. People would probably have a chance to start pulling their below market bids before stuff shut down --...