thinkorswim merging

[Crucis]

Quote from RichardRimes:

I'm happy to see this thread. I've been gone a week and am stuck at the airport trying to catch a flight. Found a computer last nite and saw the info and was actually quite stunned! I've been thinking about it much of the day trying to figure out the whys. Obviously its about money. Its a business decision. I can understand why Investools may want TOS but can't see why tos would want Investools. On the other hand if a larger brokerage bought TOS then they would lose their autonomy. In some of TOS'es free seminars they even make fun of the "black box" systems. They are option traders...interested only in the greeks and vix...Investools (from my limited knowledge of it) focuses on individual stocks. I assume investools deals in probabilities based on historical info.

Snipped...

InvesTools starts with stocks, teaching fundamentals and chart trends. The more advanced classes are aimed at options and some include mentoring sessions. You're right in one aspect, IT does seem to favor stocks over indexes by a large factor.

Cru

 

[blackchip]

I happened to listen to the ToS President's chat on the merger and he indicated the merger was due primarily to the better marketing ability of IEDU.

He said that ToS would not be changing significantly.

So at least that is the party line. Personally, I think the ToS guys have a lot of integrity and wouldn't do the deal if it would screw their clients. OTOH I can't imagine two more different cultures. It's also concerning to read above that some of the ToS partners/subs have a problem with it.

Then again, I can see why IEDU would want to change option brokers since the previous one was Optionsxpress which is amazingly, horrendously bad and crude compared to ToS, IMO.