I've been using MBT for a couple months now and I've been very pleased so far. Customer service has been good, executions are fast and the commissions are very reasonable.
I thought I would mention the couple of issues that I have had however...
1. They go down over the weekend, which is understandable but the data doesn't just freeze where it left off, instead it is often wildy inaccurate until the following Monday. Last weekend the software reported that I had no open positions at all when in fact I had several. Logging into their website showed the same thing. I was concerned maybe they had liquidated my account until Monday came around and it all went to normal. In previous weekends I could see my open positions but the numbers were often incorrect.
2. The software does has some bugs. In particular I had to quickly sell some options recently and there is a feature where you can right-click on them directly in the positions window and close the position. Unfortunately this always causes a failed transaction for some reason and by the time I figured out an alternate way to close them I had lost close to $1000.
There are also little things like the expiration column for options is a month off.
3. The profit and loss columns on the Positions window only shows PnL for that trading day and there doesn't seem to be any way to find out overall PnL based on the original price paid except by logging into the website for a portfolio report which isn't updated until the next day it seems.
In addition, these aren't really issues but limitations that I have found frustrating...
1. No option greeks or even IV. I know it is a bare-bones broker but for options these are often as important as the price itself.
2. Not enough 3rd party supported software. I'd love to be able to use AmiBroker or TradeStation without having to subscribe to another feed.
3. No backfill support for the 3rd party software they do support such as QuoteTracker.
Overall I am pleased as execution/commissions/customer service are my primary goals and I'm hopeful some of the above will be fixed/implemented at some point.
Dave...
I thought I would mention the couple of issues that I have had however...
1. They go down over the weekend, which is understandable but the data doesn't just freeze where it left off, instead it is often wildy inaccurate until the following Monday. Last weekend the software reported that I had no open positions at all when in fact I had several. Logging into their website showed the same thing. I was concerned maybe they had liquidated my account until Monday came around and it all went to normal. In previous weekends I could see my open positions but the numbers were often incorrect.
2. The software does has some bugs. In particular I had to quickly sell some options recently and there is a feature where you can right-click on them directly in the positions window and close the position. Unfortunately this always causes a failed transaction for some reason and by the time I figured out an alternate way to close them I had lost close to $1000.
There are also little things like the expiration column for options is a month off.3. The profit and loss columns on the Positions window only shows PnL for that trading day and there doesn't seem to be any way to find out overall PnL based on the original price paid except by logging into the website for a portfolio report which isn't updated until the next day it seems.
In addition, these aren't really issues but limitations that I have found frustrating...
1. No option greeks or even IV. I know it is a bare-bones broker but for options these are often as important as the price itself.
2. Not enough 3rd party supported software. I'd love to be able to use AmiBroker or TradeStation without having to subscribe to another feed.
3. No backfill support for the 3rd party software they do support such as QuoteTracker.
Overall I am pleased as execution/commissions/customer service are my primary goals and I'm hopeful some of the above will be fixed/implemented at some point.
Dave...
