Adventures In .NET Posted February 3 Report Share Posted February 3 Anyone used both TradeStation and Fidelity that can compare order execution? I'm interested in which has faster fills and the best price improvement, etc. TIA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerry Medved Posted February 3 Report Share Posted February 3 I have not used TradeStation for daytrading. Do use Fidelity and their price improvements are great. Definitely better than TD Ameritrade (my other go to). I would say Fidelity is the one to beat. Their systems are not as good as Ameritrade or some others, but the PIs definitely make up for it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adventures In .NET Posted February 3 Author Report Share Posted February 3 28 minutes ago, Jerry Medved said: I have not used TradeStation for daytrading. Do use Fidelity and their price improvements are great. Definitely better than TD Ameritrade (my other go to). I would say Fidelity is the one to beat. Their systems are not as good as Ameritrade or some others, but the PIs definitely make up for it What do you mean "Their systems are not as good as Ameritrade or some others"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerry Medved Posted February 3 Report Share Posted February 3 Ameritrade transactions update way faster than Fidelity when you place an order, Particularly noticeable if you have many transactions on the given day. Positions and balances on fidelity are also a bit delayed (at least a few seconds) compared to Ameritrade and Fidelity. Purely on technical, Ameritrade is better. But Fidelity Price Improvements are dramatically better, thus making it worth dealing with the disadvantages :). I do not know about Tradestation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adventures In .NET Posted February 4 Author Report Share Posted February 4 Does that mean with Fidelity, you can place an order and get filled, but not know about it for a few seconds? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timtrader Posted February 4 Report Share Posted February 4 I'll add my 2-cents worth here too. I don't have any input for TradeStation, but I did switch from TD Ameritrade to Fidelity several months ago and get a better bottom-line using them for daytrading. Before I completely switched over, I spent a number of hours going through a weeks worth of trades from both brokerages....looking through historical Time of Sales data (raw data), finding my trades and comparing my execution price to the Bid and Ask at the time of those trades. While both brokerages showed price improvement, Fidelity was by far the better of the two. What stood out the most is that every day of that week, a "few" trades from Fidelity gave me the best possible price available at the time (my Market Sell orders going off at the Ask price, and my Market Buy orders going off at the Bid price)....none of the TD Ameritrade orders had price improvements that were that good. The other unexpected gain is the monthly interest they pay....I'm flat at the end of each day and Fidelity pays interest on the bulk of the account balance....they currently pay about 5% in their default SPAXX fund(Their government money market fund)....so for every $25K of account balance, you get a tad over $100 EACH month (gets added to your balance on the 1st of each month)....I got less than $25 in interest from TD Ameritrade for the entire previous year. The Fidelity FZDXX fund pays a bit more if you have $100K or more in your account. So that's the good part. Here is the bad, and my work-arounds for them: As Jerry mentioned, their transactions, positions, and balances can OFTEN be delayed. MT will often "adjust" to get your position showing, but it often shows the incorrect fill price, sometimes showing much worse than the price you actually got (still better than nothing and allows you to select that position so you can sell or cover it.) Transactions and balances are correct in MT once they show up. The best work-around I've found it to also install Fidelity's free Active Trader Pro software and have it running at the same time. (Overall it's pretty much junk compared to MT, but you can get immediate and accurate fill results by using it at the same time). Install the software and open an "orders" window. Right-click that window, select "Float Window" and drag it outside of their default window area to wherever you want on your monitors (be sure to save the layout...."layouts tab"). You may also want to set up an audible trade alert (in settings). Once you have an "orders" window, you'll want to be sure to show the "status" column....this shows your fill price and fill time....it will show up nearly immediately after you make a trade in MT. I also have their "positions" window open, but it can be late to show up. The columns you'll want in your "positions" window will be "quantity", "Unadjusted Purchase Price", and "Unadjusted G/L". The only other thing I've found helpful is to also open up a "trade" window. The only benefit of a "trade" window is to enter in a stock symbol, tab to the "action" column, select "sell short" from the drop-down list, then next to the "quantity" it will show how many shares are available to short....if is shows "Call Fidelity", it isn't currently available to short. If you can get used to opening Fidelity's Active Trader Pro each day, looking at the orders window after a trade is initiated, then you should be good to go. With the better trade fills and higher interest payment, you should be able to make a bit more money too. Wish you the best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adventures In .NET Posted February 4 Author Report Share Posted February 4 Thanks @timtrader. I have ATP and agree - it's not meant for active day trading. That's a good workaround to have it open with just the necessary windows. My TD account has been migrated to Schwab and although I could re-open a new TD account, I've heard that all of those will be migrated by May, so it's not worth taking that route. I'll be interested to know how Schwab works once everyone has been migrated, but if they keep their current margin policies (limited small-cap tickers with leverage, and some without margin that trade like a cash account), then it will be a no-go for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilburpost2 Posted February 5 Report Share Posted February 5 @timtrader We seem to trade in the same style, I have noticed the same from Fidelity. Beat the spread many times, or get 1/2 penny, it adds up when you move a lot of shares. Fido treats their heavy traders well, TDA seems not to care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adventures In .NET Posted February 20 Author Report Share Posted February 20 @timtrader Do you happen to have any screenshots or video of your MT next to ATP setup showing the discrepancy with fills? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timtrader Posted February 28 Report Share Posted February 28 Sorry, I didn't see your post earlier. Below is an image with a short position on symbol "ALT" (-370 shares in the MT positions tab of the Account View window showing an entry price of $13.4343). The actual entry price was $13.51 as you can see in the ATP window on the bottom left. Note the ATP positions window on the bottom right hasn't shown the position yet, so its nice that MT shows something so you know your trade went through, you just have to get used to looking at the ATP orders window to see your actual entry price....it comes through immediately in the "status" column there. (It takes a bit of time getting used to this once you start trading with Fidelity via MT. Turning on an alert sound for trades in ATP also helps.) Notice in the image taken about a minute later, the ATP positions window on the bottom right has finally filled in. It can show quicker sometimes or take quite a bit longer....sometimes I've closed the position before it ever shows up. The MT transactions tab in the Account View window will show the correct amounts. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerry Medved Posted March 1 Report Share Posted March 1 I would need to get the combination of those screenshots AND the log files to match, but basically MT tries to fill in those gaps best it can to make up for that little deficiency in Fidelity's systems - their POSITIONS updates are horrible. And yes, sometimes the transactions/orders show, but because of the delayed nature of their updates I am hesitant to base stuff on that - as you said there can be situations where you get out of the position before they end up updating it and I can't assume what stage the updates are at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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