Backup Brokers - What do you do?

T

TheGoonior2

Curious how other folks handle this. Posted in separate thread instead of the IB thread as I wanted input from other folks who may not use IB.
Question: What king of setup do you use as a backup for your primary trading platform?

Possibilities I can think of:
1) Split your funds. Run off 2 (or more brokerages).
2) Mostly fund primary account. Have 2nd account funded to the point where you could hedge with opposite positions
3) Use alternate order placement (phone call or whatever)

Any thoughts?
I figure there is no "Quantas of brokers" (to quote an old Rainman movie reference) and that all will have an issue from time to time, so I'm more interested in the setup rather than "I use XXX and they never have problems".

Thx in advance.
 
I have Schwab as my emergency backup for my futures daytrading. Their futures platform is horrible if I was to use it to trade actively, but as a backup it works. Obviously I can backup any stock positions I may have taken on IB, but those are rare these days. Most of my equity and option stuff is swing and Schwab works for that.
 
If a broker is down, unlikely you can quickly move funds so you have to keep both accounts permanently funded.

However, to permanently have funds in 2 brokers (with two logins and two margin requirements to deal with), seems like a lot of work. Would the loss of productivity and margin capacity be worth the "safety" of having two brokers. I bet OPRA has been down more than Interactive Brokers has over the last 10 years (with both being down less than a few total hours over that time period).

Maybe the ideal solution is to keep 5% of your money in another broker so that if your main broker goes down, you can go to the market buy a ton of gamma as a hedge. But that will cost you something as you can't invest that 5% actively. Is it worth it?
 
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If trading I think you absolutely need a backup broker. I've had the issue where a broker went down while in a position and it was great to be able to watch the market and offset if needed. I only had to offset a position that went against once, but it was infinitely better than sitting on hold and losing my ass. I think the final results were still a small loss, but it would have been large by the time I finally got through to the broker to close the position if I hadn't offset in another account.
 
I used to trade with just one broker but would never do that again. I have 3 brokers now and like the flexibility. Each broker has their strengths and weakness. It is up to you to best optimize how you use them. If you only have one broker you have no outs when things go down. Two brokers is better. Three brokers is my preference.

I recommend you do what makes you feel best. What works for me might not be your thing. Just think about what you are trying to accomplish.
 
I precisely do what you have mentioned as the first option. Splitting funds into different accounts helps on many grounds. When 1 is down and under you don’t miss out on trading good days. Comparing pricing is another plus. Keeping both funded is not hard when they don’t ask much in terms of balance being maintained, I am using Avatrade and Fxview and with both I don’t need to have a huge balance at any time. There is this inactivity fees which is higher in case of Avatrade but I trade actively from both accounts so that’s not a problem. I tend to use Fxview more though due to faster executions and lucky for me so far I have not had an order not being filled.
 
I have Fxview as the main account and fxpro, icmarkets as backup ones. They’re not just to diversify my funds but also to compare brokers so that I get the best fill. So far, they are all good broker, altho commission charges in fxview is cheapest out of all.
 
I have IB as main, and TOS is my backup (also use for main charts and technical analysis). I do miss Lightspeed tbh. Will eventually add them into the mix again since I never once had any down days with them.
 
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