ex_hacker202

I just figured out why those symbols don't have PEs shown with Fido OR Schwab as data source - they're all ETFs or mutual funds, which really don't have PEs, only the stocks they hold do. For money losing stocks Schwab will show you TTM PEs. So we can chalk this up to "nevermind, I was having a brain fart" 😉

Just noticed this today after I added a stock to one of my portfolios and certain data columns didn't populate, like volumes, so I switched from Schwab's feed to Fido and found Fido is missing PEs for multiple stocks - ignore the minor diffs in the 2nd digit right of the decimal point, that's just because the current pps changed while i was fooling around taking screenshots. The attachment is for one of my Schwab accounts, some are spec plays that don't make any money yet, so they don't have a PE - but at least one stock, QRVO, does make profits but only Schwab has a PE shown in MT - as soon as I switch data sources to Fido a bunch of PE's disappear. I did the same test with my 31 stock/fund watchlist portfolio (not shown) and Schwab was only missing 6 out of 31 PE's (all 6 stocks are not profitable), but Fido was missing a whopping 16 our of 31 - any idea what's going on here?

I've never seen a QR code menu, but I only eat out at a couple restaurants and even that isn't more than a couple times a month. Did a little googling and was horrified by what I found: 1. Many places require you to download their own app and create an account before you can scan the QR code and download the menu as a PDF. How can you trust the app doesn't contain malware or tracking software? These places don't have WiFi either, so you are burning up a bunch of your monthly data quota every time you have to download a menu. You also can only see a few items on your phone at a time, what a PITA - plus it ruins the entire dining out experience by forcing people to stick their noses into their cell phones to find what they want to order. And if you don't have a smartphone, you're just screwed - no choice but to leave, and you may not discover the problem until you've already waited 20 mins to be seated. 2. Phishing QR codes has gone up 600% in 2023 and it's only going to get worse - they're hijacking the restaurant QR code and sending you to a different website to get the menu, and who knows what might be contained in the fake menu download. A survey done in 2024 also found that 88% of people want real paper menus, and lots of people walk out of the restaurant instead of doing everything in bullet #1 - as a result, QR menus are disappearing in the US, but QR paying appears to be here to stay, although it's optional, don't have to use it. 3. Some places are using this tech to get rid of wait staff - you order from the menu using your phone and pay the bill with your phone - zero interaction with a real human, except for the person who brings the food and beverages to your table - it's basically 100% self service. I always leave generous tips for good service, but I'll be damned if I'm going to tip someone just for bringing me food to my table or bar stool (it's usually not even my waiter) - do you tip the person taking orders at a takeout counter? I don't. On top of that, my state's laws for tipped workers say they must make the equivalent of $15/hr at a minimum - guess what's going to happen to restaurant food prices if/when QR ordering/paying leads people to tip less for less service? A Taco Bell I eat at once a month just got renovated and there are no humans taking orders anymore - there aren't even any cash registers - there's two big double sided vertical touch screen panels where you tap on an item to order it, then you have to scan a chipped CC at the machine to pay - you cannot use cash. There's probably an option to use Apple pay or Google pay, but I didn't stick around to find out - the 2nd time I was there I got so frustrated with being led to pages I did not need to see but still had to skip thru to get to the final pay screen that I gave up and walked out, and I'll never eat there again.

What can I say - I'm a luddite. If I hadn't been forced to stop working in late 2006 due to major chronic health problems I'm sure I would have owned a smartphone when they came out (not sure I would pay for a monthly data plan now though, would just be throwing money away), but they didn't even exist yet, so I was out of the tech loop when they became commonplace and they just bypassed me. I've owned a flip phone since 1999 (Motorola Startac was the first), all I needed it to do was make phone calls while I was driving somewhere, and that's still true today (I don't text, hate it). I do have an Android tablet but can't stand using it - I have no clue how to do anything except open a browser or play music, and my hand-me-down old Chromebook is essentially just a browser, so it's a piece of cake to use - I love the ability to hit the microphone icon and say the search terms and have Google translate my voice to text to do the search - but that's the only thing I do with it, look up answers to questions that pop into my head while watching TV at night - I keep it plugged in and have it stashed under my couch, and now that I have it I don't know how I lived without it. . And on a side note - I really hate what smartphones have done to social interactions - when I walk into a restaurant to get dinner with friends the first thing they do after we sit down is bury their heads in their phones for 3-5 mins - no conversations until they catch up on what happened between when they left home and arrived at the restaurant - it's just plain rude. What really could have happened in the last half hour that you absolutely have to know right now? And standing next to someone swiping thru their phone for 1-2 mins waiting for them to find a specific photo they just HAVE to show you RIGHT NOW drives me nuts too, because most people don't create separate folders for different types of pix, or whatever the equivalent is on a smartphone. Actually, if it takes more than 30 secs, I tell them "when you find it let me know" and walk away to go talk to someone else. Edit: dummy me forgot to tell you the great news about moving from TDA to Schwab w/o remembering to create a Schwab login before the weekend transition - I wasn't going to call and be put on hold for hours while people in the same boat were flooding their tech support lines, so I just fired up MT yesterday and change all the portfolio windows to use Fido as the data feed - but something odd happened - a popup dialog box appeared from within MT that let me log into Schwab after I clicked on a few "yes I understand" boxes - my Schwab account has the same ID as my TDA IRA accout did, and the PW is the same too - it was like magic! If that was your work kudos - what a relief - I didn't have to contact Schwab for anything.

I can't find a good authenticator for for Windows 10 desktop - everything I found is an app for mobile devices, and furthermore, they all appeared to be browser password protectors - I'm already using one of those. Why do you say don't use SMS/text for 2FA? That's default for most sites, although many won't let me use my landline to get a spoken verification code, and VOIP landlines can't accept texts. My cellphone is emergency use only - it's a dumb flip phone that costs me $3 every time I use it that's good for 24 hours before I get charged another $3, and I keep it in my man purse stashed in the kitchen - I turn it on maybe 6-8 times/year - have no use for a cellphone since I'm retired and at home 90% of the time, sometimes 100% depending on the day - everyone knows to call my landline or email me (my Dad is the same way, - this apple didn't fall far from the tree). Anyway, back to the subject at hand - thanks for confirming as long as I keep at least one Schwab account I can get L2 data. Still going to move at least my taxable account to an existing unused Fido account to get that juicy 5% on cash w/o having to lift a finger. I wouldn't be thinking of moving the IRA elsewhere if Schwab didn't have a really stupid rule - you cannot enroll in stocks/funds that offer a real DRIP that gives you stock at a discount. I used to own the CEFs PCI/PDI, and if they were trading at or above a 5% premium to NAV you would get new shrs at a 5% discount to MP - you got $1.05 worth of stock for each $1 in distributions - over the years I held them that earned me a ton of extra shrs by increasing the compounding effect, in particular because those CEFs paid monthly. There is absolutely no excuse for Schwab not allowing enrollment in DRIPs (only broker I'm aware of that has that rule) - in fact, I know of one stock (think it's a BDC) where shareholders are automatically enrolled in the DRIP and get stock, not cash - you have to do some paperwork and mail it in to your broker and the company to opt out and get cash - no idea how Schwab would handle that.

I'm gettubg migrated this weekend and I'm really not happy with a lot of the things TDA had that Schwab decided to ditch, but my biggest problem with the transition is that I had 3 separate TDA accounts, each with their own username and PW, so if someone hacked into one of my accounts they couldn't access the other two - I used to have them all linked so I only needed one login but after being a victim of ID theft in 2014 some thief hacked into my tiny ROTH account, which gave them access to my IRA and taxable account - within minutes of breaking into my ROTH, they went to my biggest value account, the IRA, and sold every stock in it. Got a flurry of trade transaction emails (thank god I was home and at the computer when it happened!) and immediately called TDA to have them lock my accounts and reverse the sales. But I just learned yesterday that with Schwab (and Fido) you can only have one login per SS # - that means all accounts are linked and there's no way to unlink them, and if someone gets their hands on your Schwab ID and PW they can do anything they want in any of your accounts - that's mind boggling to me because of the risk involved based on my 2014 hacking experience - despite the fact that I was able to get the IRA sales reversed I literally almost had a heart attack when that flurry of emails flooded my inbox and for a few minutes I thought I was financially ruined (my Dad and both brothers have all had real heart attacks by age 60 so it's something I worry about). So I'm thinking of moving my cash account to Fido - they automatically put cash into their MMF paying 5%, while Schwab only pays about the same TDA did, which is next to nothing - YTD I've earned more interest on the $100 I deposited into the Fido account to open it to get a backup data source for MT after Ally pulled support from MT than I have on a high 5 figure cash balance with TDA. To limit the hacking risk exposure to all 3 Schwab accounts I'm probably going to move the cash account to the existing Fido account and create a new account with Etrade to transfer the IRA***, leaving me with just a tiny ROTH account at Schwab so I can get L2 data in MT - but I remember back when I first opened my TDA cash account and still had my 401(k) with my old employer prior to moving it to a rollover IRA at TDA you had to have a minimum amount of money in the account to get certain services for fee, and L2 was one of them - for some reason $100k sticks in my mind as the min level required for free L2 (this was circa 2002). I just spent close to an hour today trying to find out if Schwab also has a minimum investment amount requirement to get L2 for free but came up completely blank - only thing I saw that mentioned a dollar amount was a stupid AI generated answer on Google that said the min for free L2 from Schwab was $1M, which I know cannot be true - I think the AI was talking about how much money you need to become a premium Schwab client and get free access to investment management services. So does anyone know how much money I need to keep at Schwab to get L2 for free? Or is the only requirement for MT to get L2 from Schwab is to have a Schwab account, period?

What is this 260/120/35 day intraday backfill about? For intraday charts the max # of days you can see is just 10, even if you pick a start date of 30 days ago - is the data you're talking about for historical charts? Confused about what I may or may not miss with this change - doesn't look like it will affect me at all.

Does that also apply when you use MT to access three individual TDA accounts that turn into Schwab accounts on May 10th? I have MT set up to log into all 3 TDA accounts on startup, plus 1 Fido account and one Ally Invest account - the (which is problematic with all accounts on one login) is what's confusing me - are you talking about running MT on 3 different devices only, or 3 different accounts on the same device?

If we also have a Fido account linked to MT can't we get L2 from there by switching the data source MT is using?

Figured it out - I forgot this method to fill in shrs out and MC - you don't try to backfill using Yahoo as data source, in a portfolio window go to "Main", change "Source" to Yahoo, which will fill in those columns for everything but ETFs - I then chose Fido as source and it filled in the ETF data. If you don't have a Fido account you can't do this, of course.

Installed the latest update two days ago and I cannot find any data source that will fill the shrs out column, therefore the market cap column is also empty (see screencap). I've tried backfilling from Fido, TDA, Smartsource (don't know where it gets data from), and Yahoo - but I now get an error trying to backfill using Yahoo, got some weird message that MT could not pull data from Yahoo the first time I tried it - subsequent attempts to use Yahoo don't bring up that error msg, but it's not backfilling those two columns. I REALLY depend on the shrs out column so when a secondary offering comes out I can quickly calculate the % dilution the offering will cause. What happened to that data, and if I can revert to the previous version of MT will it restore the data in those columns? Not that I actually know how to roll back and MT update.....

Thank god! I just got an email from Schwab that I will be switched to them from TDA on May 10. Still might end up moving everything to Fido since Schwab will not allow customers to enroll in real DRIPs that give you shares of a CEF at a discount - that's like stealing 5% of my div money for a CEF like PDI.

Yay! I can almost guarantee you that MT users griping to TDA about losing MT's API and calling to get their transition to Schwab delayed so we can keep using MT is why they pushed back the conversion date. Sometimes complaining the right way actually works! I also mentioned I might have to transfer my accounts to Fido - pretty sure I'm not the only one who said that and meant it.

Wait a second - does that mean Jerry STILL might not have access to Schwab's API before all TDA clients are switched over? I opened a Fido account as a backup data source, but sometimes when I switch the data feed in MT from TDA to Fido the green light turns yellow, then red - MT isn't getting data from Fido consistently, at least in my very limited testing of it so far.

Ok, thanks - any idea why AMRN suddenly started getting delayed/deficient errors? Fido does the same thing - might be related to it being a penny stock? Just found your reply to my post today, also your reply in the bugs forum about Fido quotes not working (they are now) - for some reason Comcast has been rejecting all email sent to the addy I use to get alerts for MT forums,discovered it started on Nov 7 - but I got SPAM in that account just two days ago - how the heck can that happen? (rhetorical question, don't expect you to know the answer, just beyond PO'd because that's my primary business email addy and god knows how many important emails I've missed since then! And Comcast is clueless about what's going on)

Just noticed this yesterday - symbol AMRN is now showing a "D" beside it for delayed, plus there's a note I've never seen before, "RTFDelayed" (Real Time Feed Delayed?) - it's been trading under a buck for two months, but it's nowhere close to being delisted - so why is it the only symbol with delayed quotes? I see the same if I switch to Fido as data source (got that working, ignore my other post about it).

Jerry, I just added my new Fido account to MT, got it verified, but when I select Fido as data source the start/stop button turns yellow, then red with an X - what do I need to do to get streaming quotes from Fido? I did have to take an extra step on the Fido website to "authorize" or whatever word they used to get streaming quotes, but even with that done MT is not getting data. Note I tried this in AH (4:30) - does Fido stop providing data at 4:00 pm or is there another problem? One reason I opened that Fido account was to have a backup source of data in case TDA didn't delay my transition to Schwab, but I also may transfer my accounts to Fido because Schwab does not allow clients to enroll in real DRIPs - that's a huge problem for CEFs that give discounts for DRIP'd divs, Schwab forces you to pay market price. For those who own the Cornerstone funds CLM or CRF it's a HUGE problem - both give you DRIP shrs at NAV, which is usually 20%-25% cheaper than MP.

Not a dumb question at all - I won't claim this is the official answer (wait for Jerry for that), but I would assume you would not get data from TDA because you could no longer sign into your account - you don't have a TDA account after you're switched to Schwab. I'm afraid unless you open an account with a broker that's on MT's current data feed list (like Fido), you will only be able to get delayed data from Yahoo, the only free data source MT has. I already opened a Fido account just as a backup data source in case TDA didn't delay my switch, was a piece of cake. Just put $100 into it until I decide whether to move everything except my ROTH from TDA to Fido - will probably keep the ROTH with Schwab in order to get faster real time data from Schwab, the kind TDA currently provides - above Jerry said Fido is only updated once a second - shouldn't matter in most cases, but for traders watching L2 and raw time and sales it could make a diff. I don't like the paperwork nightmare of keeping accounts with 3 different brokers straight - I opened a decent sized Ally Invest account when they first offered MT for free but they have since severed ties with MT, pulled access to their API, so I might open a 2nd Fido account and transfer the Ally account to it - zero reason to keep the Ally account open, and they degraded their website so badly they removed the ability for you to download transactions in csv or QFX formats - unbelievable.

I just had 3 of them show up in my inbox at 1:18 pm EDT, one for each TDA account - whew! Thank god that's over with for now.

I found that - what I was looking at was the secondary market for CD's - that link you gave is only for new issues - finding secondary CD's is what takes so much time compared to TDA. I've been reading the Schwab and Fidelity sub-Reddits the last few days looking for a few specifics answers, like why won't Schwab let you enroll in DRIPs, and almost universally people recently switched from TDA to Schwab are terribly unhappy about it - the app stinks, website stinks compared to TDA's, and ThinkorSwim is now unavailable (not sure that's true).. Fido didn't have so many complaints, but they're apparently not anywhere as good as what TDA offered either. Really sad Schwab is taking the best online broker's tools and throwing them away - more than a few said their website looks like it was designed in the 90's for people who invest money then set and forget - if you trade, you're going to hate Schwab - their app (maybe website too?) doesn't.automatically update quotes, you have to do it manually with a refresh button - seriously?

Thnx Jerry - and thnx to everyone for helping out with this confusing issue. Been checking out Fido's website now that I have an account and I'm not impressed - looking for short term CDs on TDA is a piece of cake, takes all of two mouse clicks - not so easy with Fido, have to enter a lot of criteria to see a list, and there is no way I've found to separate the search into 3, 6, 9 mo CDs unless you create 3 different searches and save them - it takes over a minute to create one search and save it, and I don't think it will update automatically since you have to enter start and end maturity dates, meaning in 6 months the 3 and 6 mo CD searches will return null results - what a PITA compared to TDA. Don't know what Schwab's CD search looks like, they won't let you see anything unless you have an account.

To you and jca, who also gave me the same answer - I have three TDA accounts, initially was working just on getting my IRA transfer delayed. I saw your responses today and logged into all 3 accounts one by one, didn't see anything about "you're being moved to Schwab" on the main page - do you think TDA really do me the courtesy of delaying the transfer of all 3 accounts w/o me specifically asking them to delay the other two? Surely I'm not the only one trying to delay multiple TDA accounts - has anyone else asked to delay one and have TDA automatically delay all accounts you have?

Did you get a call back yet? I called TDA on Monday the 16th and 5 days later haven't heard a peep from them.

Five days later and not a peep from TDA - gonna have to try to escalate this - you do have people using MT that were able to get extended, correct?

I just spent 45 mins on hold with TDA - and they made no promises about extending my accounts to March 2024, said they'll let me know in a few days whether they'll allow it - the rep didn't sound too confident about this, but I'll let you know if they extended me or not in a couple days.