Will you stay with Cyber/Schwab if they only offer per trade pricing?

I also am trying to figure out where to go, and am looking hard. I somehow thought that Schwab would not be this bad. AAA's letter say it nicely. I also have a problem with the server side alerts not being directed and limit of 2 conditions. I now see that my thoughts were a fantasy.

I have looked at 6 platforms/brokers so far and sadly none are as good a overall fit for me as Cybertrader was. Important to note is that of the 6 platforms, streetsmart pro seems... well , the worst.
 
I liquidated most of my cybertrader account last week and sent it to tradestation. Their stock commissions are a bit higher, but their options are way cheaper. I was always reluctant to go to Tradestation because of the bad reviews here, but so far the platform is very intuitive. Also it takes a lot less minimum trading activity than cybertrader for the account fees to be waived. I do have to pay for level 2 and cme and nyse, but it's such a small cost of doing business.

Overall, I have been quite happy, they do have idiots running their customer service, but I barely called when I was at cybertrader. You have to put up with it for a week until you get your account set up, but after that you do your own thing.

I'm actually wondering why I put up with esignal and cyber for data all these years. The $tick and $prem data feeds are much faster and more accurate in TS as well as the options on the charting. Every once in a while you get an interruption in the data, ie the fed decision, but it comes up within a minute. I didn't get logged off, it just froze for a minute, but considering the amount of volume coming through, most platforms probably had issues.

As far as Schwab street smart pro, I left them 2 years ago and went to Cybertrader because I hated the difficulty of shorting and the delayed account info, no commission reporting, crappy margin policy, and overall mediocre platform. I still had a small account there for 2 years, but never traded it with 9.95 commissions, it was just a waste of money to trade. Now that I have 2 accounts with schwab, I'm wondering what the hell they were thinking killing cybertrader.

Lastly to get any options approval above level 1 at Schwab it takes about a month to mail in the form and for some reason they rejected me from the level 4 that I requested and left it at 1. Schwab is in the stone age as far as electronic documents and such.

I opened my tradestation account and got level 3 approval at the open. To me it's the little details that are important for the people that run this is a business. You want your broker to be as seamless and invisible as possible.
 
I am at NobleTrade now and happy as hell. As far as executions go it Cyber times 10! The biggest downfall for noble is they have no stock screener comparable to the Cyber platform. Not a problem for me, all I did was keep enough in SSPRO to do some swing trades here and there. The requirements are 4 trades a month to keep SSPRO. So I am running both, using SSPRO's screeners and using Noble's awsome direct access trading.
My commissions went up about 2% which is no biggy compared to trying to trade in the dark with SSPRO. Another good thing about Noble is they are on the PENSION FINANCIAL plan just like Cyber was. It may be a little discuraging at first though for they offer a tote load of options for routing. This was by far my best compromise though, atleast knowing I am getting the fills I want/deserve.

Paying a FEW extra dollars makes up for those high possibilities of losing hundreds if not thousands in one single trade.

PM me if needed and I can give you the guy to talk too!

You need to talk to the right guy in my experience.

You get to trade stocks, option, futures, forex all on one account.
 
Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in here.

Besides the obvious defaults with the software, the biggest complaint I have is with customer service. I have not had the luxury of getting through to a rep within 10 minutes as of yet. I have numerous issues with error messages while trying simple purchases of stocks. The latest was with an IPO that didn't go through. When I finally got a hold of a rep they first of all couldn't see or know what my error messages where. I had to read word for word what the messages were. Then the rep asked what kind of stock it was and I replied it was an IPO. He asked what an IPO was. I repeat...He asked what an IPO was!

On the first day I had margin problems that restricted my account. In fact, every day this week I've had issues with my margin and trading balances. And then today...this was the straw that broke the camel's back. This is the email waiting for me when I logged in tonight:



December 12, 2007



Account Number ****-*XX8


Questions? Call 1-800-435-4000


We're required to limit your trading to funds you currently have available.



Because our records show that the trade(s) you placed on 12/11/2007 were not settled in accordance with securities industry regulations, we are required to restrict trading in your account to the funds you have available. This restriction will stay in place for at least 90 calendar days.

What this means for your account.
This restriction does not prevent you from trading, but does require that you have settled funds! or securities on hand before placing an order. To determine how much you can trade during this time, please refer to the "Settled Funds Available to Trade" balance, which is displayed when you log in to your account on schwab.com. You can also talk to a Schwab Client Service Specialist at 1-800-435-4000 to determine exactly how much buying power is available to you.

Important information about trading without sufficient funds.
When we place orders for accounts without sufficient settled funds, or securities on deposit, we are required to monitor the account to make sure it complies with these conditions:


You promptly make a full cash payment with settled funds, or deliver previously owned securities into the account within the payment period; and


You do not sell the securities purchased until full payment with settled funds has been made; and


You do not make payment with the proceeds from the sale of other securities made after the trade date.

If these conditions are not met, we are required to withdraw your ability to trade without sufficient funds on deposit and this restriction will last for 90 calendar days.

Your next steps.
If you'd like to learn more about trade settlement or think you have received this notice in error, please call a Schwab Client Service Specialist at 1-800-435-4000. You can also contact your dedicated service team, if applicable.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter. We recognize that trading regulations can be confusing. Once again, please contact us if you have questions. We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to serve your trading and investment needs.

Sincerely,

Glenn Peterson
Senior Vice President, Client Asset Services
1-888-254-2036

When I called customer service, the rep put me on hold for 10 minutes and came back to tell me that it was another mistake on Schwab's part and he would contact the margin department to resolve the issue. Well, 3 strikes and you're out. Three days in a row that NOT ONE thing went right.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a suitable replacement? I saw someone recommend Noble trading. The website looks interesting. Any other recommendations? I don't think IB is for me, as I need multi charting to fill in when the stock box is filled in, something that IB doesn't have in their software (from what I can see).

Joey
 
ok, I see many here asking about other platforms so I decided to post what I have looked at. Please understand that these comments are only my opinion and in most cases I am just confused as anyone else. I would also say that my trading style is aprox 10 trades a day, or 25-30 one way tickets. Commission is a significant portion of my profit so price is very important to me but so is customer service and ease of use. I do not use a lot of indicators but would really like some type of conditional order ability. I use other scanning so that is not a factor. And, If I am going to pay ecn fees then I want rebates too. Here goes.

Tradestation- Like that it is both broker and platform, rich feature set but much more than I need. Expensive for my style and no free demo made me lose interest.

Instaquote from cobra or rml. nice platform but could not get past the boring chart look. good prices, cobra support is very responsive and knowing, did not talk to rml but love their explain everything site.

Omnipro - again from cobra or rml, many others have too. interface is intuitive, basic features but very nicely done.

Realtick- from rml or mastertrader. does everything I could ever need. super slick interface. lots of chatter about slow data has me shy and its expensive.

IB- great price but need a front end. looked briefly at ningatrader and buttontrader and esign but decided I really need broker support.

Also, I thought about prop for an instant but decided it was not for me.


So far I am leaning omnipro at cobra but would appreciate any insight or comments. btw, I would have never thought of leaving cybertrader had they just left it alone. I think learning the in's and outs of software is tricky, time consuming and I am not looking forward to it.
 
To start with, I have just registered as a member to Elite Trader and I would like to say hello to all of the members.

I have been looking for a site to see if I was the only one having problems with Schwab. Guess not Huh!!!

I see that everyone has a unique experience to share with the group, so here is mind.

On top of all of the changes and missing colunms like all of you have experienced, when I opened my two accounts on Monday morning, I had several N/A in place of amounts next to several options I was holding. Waited 39 minutes (longest yet) for a rep to help me. She directs me to the Schwab website, has me log in and shows me several options in the account that were just transfered over but not yet settled.

I point out to her that
1. the transfer was all suppose to happen over the weekend and 2. these options that appeared in my account when you looked at it from the website were not options I owned nor did they match up with the correct options that were listed in SSPro. Turned out my account showed $157,000 more in equity then what I knew to be true.

She freaked and told me someone would be contacting me shortly. I don't think I had time to hang up the phone before it started ringing. The call came from a different division known as the Cybertrader Intagration team. The rep also freaked and still today, they can't explain where the options came from or if they could have detected it if I sold to close. As far as the balances appeared, my account was worth $157,000 more.
So while I had these so called experts on the phone(and believe me, they were thankful, I didn't rip them off) I had several questions for them and I will share what they told me.

1. I asked what happened to all of the CT employees.
As of that call he said they were all Schwabies for 3 hours.

2. I asked why so many colunms of info were different or missing in SS Pro.
He wasn't even aware of it. I had to show him several and he wrote down the list that I mentioned, were important to me. These are just a few:
if you look in Acct Details, under positions and go to columns, these are some that are now missing.

Underlying: The stock symbol that matches up to the Option you own.
Days till Expiration: Days till your Option expires.(Now can be found in a new tool called my position. Means you have to open another box)
Price: Price paid for a share / Option at time of execution. (their price shows the current price).
P&L/Share: Profit or loss per one share or option.(they only show total gain/loss of total number of shares/contracts plus the price you paid, included as one total amount.
$P&L: Gain/loss on the total trade(without the cost of the trade)

3. I told him the reps at Schwab seemed clueless to solving the problems.
He said that was true because the amount of calls were so great, they were rerouted to normal Schwab reps who were caught in the middle. This also explains the long wait to talk to a live person, who didn't know much.

4. I pretty much ended the conversation with telling him my disgust for the events that unfolded. It appeared to me that no one ever did a test download, to see if CT and Schwab would mate. I told him, I hope some big heads get fired over this.

If I was going to bring in 5 million new customers, the logical thing to do would have been to do a test on 100,000 well before the due date. See what problems arose and have everything solved. I also told him it was evident that it wasn't donwloaded because all of the Schwab reps were looking at it for the first time when all of the phone calls started to get rerouted to them. It was like the blind leading the Blind.

So I realize this was very winded for which I apologize and if any of you were missing about $157,000 in options, I had them and gave them back. Makes you wonder how many others this happened to and how they will catch them. Rep says they will have to go back into every CT account and match up the exchange while looking in both the website and the software of each account.
PS. I am in the process of looking for a new broker. Please continue to post your naws and yahs about brokers you are familiar with.
Rich C338
 
TargetO

You mention you have heard RealTick is slow. Can you tell me where to go to find info like that. I am desperating looking at several brokers and need as much info as possible, to make a sane decision over this terrible disaster.
 
Hi all,
My first post here; though have been silent reader for years.

I have been with cybertrader/cybercorp for more than 8 years.
Recently, the reasons were I wanted the ability to have simple web-based trading and also the platform/software based trading. I daytrade options and equities.

After moving to Schwab, right from the first day, have had issues.
1) the buy/sell button switch
2) I was not setup for PDT and by mistake had a day trading call generated.
3) The long wait to get a customer service representative on the phone
4) I was told that I cannot daytrade options.

For me, the fourth one is the main reason to move. Now, I am on the look out for a suitable broker.

Please keep posting your experiences.
 
I'm looking at Noble Trading right now. The software seems comparable and the pricing seems reasonable. I only trade equities.

I'm setup for a live demo with their tech support. So far the people have been very helpful talking to me, answering all questions.

I'm also looking at Fidelity, Optionsbroker, and TOS.

I think alot of soon to be ex-Cybertrader clients would appreciate feedback from anyone who has made the switch to any broker with open feedback. I know I certainly would.

Rocco
 
Don't you think we should have heard some response from Scwab by now. What a Fiasco. I have a friend who has a special account with Schwab. Its formembers who hold over $1 milin securities. They get preferencial treatment with an assigned agent to handle their need. Through my friend, I was able to talk to this agent. He wasn't even aware there was a problem. Talk about a sleeping giant.
I compare this fiasco with Bill Gates and Microsoft. Just get it out there and we can fix it later (maybe).
Rich C338
 
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