I hope you are not considering using BAIS. Their system is completely unsuitable for active traders:
1. The order system is dangerously obsolete and balky, worse than older similar trading interfaces 10 years ago (more warning and menu pages to finish an order). e.g. Change orders may not transmit at all for an intraday trade - really nasty if you have 5 seconds to catch a peak on a system that multiple screens take a minute or more. (turned out you need to "cancel" and start the order over again for a day trade.)
2. Their afterhours, premarket ECN availability is very limited with a short premarket separated by 15 minutes to opening and a 10 minute gap 4pm to 410pm. Whereas IB (for example) trades US equity seamlessly, 4 am to 8 pm on one order.
3. Each afterhours session requires a separate entry, during session hours, literally three times the work *and* more screen time at odd hours. No "just sell it if it touches this price overnight" and I'm done at 401 pm.
4. BAIS uses relatively ineffective market maker(s), I believe paid order flow.
5. Their IRA account is a cash only IRA, which means you can only full cycle the account once every 3 days.
6. They have extra cumbersome paperwork and some asinine policies that protect *them*, not you. Paperwork that they themselves miss until a real time crisis occurs.
7. Their order and accounting system is generally unfriendly to day trades
If you are reaching for the 30 free trades per month, rest assured the blown trades missed by 4 cents difference, or more, by seconds (or even hours) with BAIS, you are fooling yourself and can cost thousands at a clip. Plus overpriced margin interest. After the BAIS experience, I could even value 1 cent per share executions, 5000 sh at a shot.
Run! don't walk, away from this TARP powdered organization. It is the product of two mangey dogs (ML and BA). I had to do some financial oversight for my parents recently, and despite experience with about a dozen discount brokers over the last ten+ years (Brown, ML, Freeman Weldwood, Wang, Schwab, SureTrade, Scott, etc) this was #1, my WORST trade experience despite all the "premiere" live "help". I think a brokerage like this can be extremely dangerous to the health and wealth of an active trader.
After some of the other brokers, I never have harsh thoughts about IB or ToS (recent addition), although I am in the market for an additional broker(s) for my family's finances (several baskets wanted). I would like to know more about the capital structure and safety of outfits like Lightspeed, Protrade, may be Assent or others without relying on SIPC, Lloyds, AIG etc insurance. However, that extra insurance in adequate amounts (ML's total policy cover was a fraction of the potential need, perhaps 1/20th) is a personal requirement for holding over $100,000 cash. I definitely value good execution and easy to use, real time software features more these days.
