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Platform: CTS/T4 (realtime); RT Investor (DTN-MA); POP.calculator (my own prop front end)
Broker: DDT (Crosslands) / Cunnigham - CTS T4
Trading: E6
Posts: 28 since Jan 2012
Thanks Given: 22
Thanks Received: 21
I have just opened an account with Crosslands through Deep Discount Trading (DDT).
An NFA search shows DDT to be a guaranteed IB (Howard Lender, manager with greater than 10% ownership) of Crossland. The account application is through Crosslands (and on their "letterhead"), Crossland also provides IT & customer service support to me directly. Howard described DDT as the" Deep Discount Division of the Clearing Firm 'Crossland' ".
Howard was the point of contact throughout the account opening process and has provided timely and thorough service. Absolutely no complaints. I am using CTS - T4 and it did take a few emails to sort out "instrument (contract" enable-ment in T4 but again (still early) but everything working fine.
I choose DDT because:
(1) I wanted to use Volume Strips and it is only available through the CTS T4 API; therefore, I was limited to brokers supporting T4 ... links to those brokers are found on CTS's website (first post, so couldn't post link)
(2) from those "T4" brokers:
... DDT offered the lowest commission rates (of those brokers prepared to publish rates on on their web site); cheapest is not always the best way to go, but it doesn't hurt;
... addressed the issue of the transfer of money through free ACH transfers out (this was important to me);
... offered a very informative & straightforward web site that answered most of my questions / concerns; don't be put off by the web site's very dated look (first post, so couldn't post link);
... an immediate & informative response to my email inquiry ( I am still waiting from responses from the two other brokers I queried).
Again, so far so good (yes, it's still early), but as an earlier member said (paraphrasing): ' if you don't notice your broker they are doing their job' so here's hoping to 'not noticing them'.
Just found this site through a Google search and I found it immediately helpful. Way to go Big Mike and his team!
i have also opened an account at ddt. howard is indeed a great guy, very helpful and professional.
unfortunately the combination of crossland and tradingtechnologies is the bottleneck. while crossland is supposed to be a small but solid company (unlike other technically bankrupt clearing companies like penson) and it offers the advanced option of moving your money for free (most others make you pay for moving your own money), the crossland customer portal called ranweb is still archaic. in combination with the ninjatrader and tradingtechnologies you end up with wrong information or with no information at all.
first of all the ranweb is a dated database from the 80ies which requires almost some kind programming skills as a customer to access. it is not even updated in real time. all you can see is outdated information.
what is even worse is the information that feeds into the ninjatrader from tradingtechnologies. there is no account information in the ninjatrader unlike from my other providers amp and ib. sometimes after the first trade the information shown in the ninjatrader becomes fictious. it shows wrong information about your balance and it shows a wrong entry point in the dome. then you have to disconnect and connect again in order to show the updated balance of the day. by doing that you loose your active exit strategies.
it gets even worse when you do not exit a future before the close. the next day there will be no information in the
ninjatrader. you will find your open position only in the ranweb by starting a query in the database. when you exit the position in the ninjatrader, you will end up with no information at all. no profit information is shown in the ninjatrader and a ranweb-query will still show you the non-existing position that you have just exited. you end up with no information about your profit and even no information about your cash balance. the ninjatrader will still show the exit position as an open position calculating a wrong profit/loss.
the reason why i am writing my experience here is:
1. crossland needs to upgrade its customer portal from an archaic batch processing database to a normal realtime customer platform like any other normal broker in the world
2. trading technologies needs to report the cash position and only accurate information coming in real time from the clearing company to the ninjatrader
3. trading technologies needs to update its api to 64 bit as one of the last in the industry
what i ask for is very easy to do, nothing special and nothing sophisticated. in fact it is just the standard in the industry.
i want to use this system because it is my cheapest. it is a few dimes cheaper than the next cheapest.
a cheap system does not need to be backwards.
if the mentioned companies are deaf, the customer will always have the option to use the second and third cheapest system
Is the Crossland customer portal Ranweb real time updating? Does it reflect trades executed by the trade desk? How long does it take to reflect changed status of a position?
On SC, I've only had problems with incorrect reporting of overnight positions which TT FIX doesn't support, and also of bad high value prints on daily/historical charts on CL, GC, etc which SC declined to support and said is the fault of the trading server.
Otherwise, I was very happy with the reliability, speed, and price of TT. What would be the next best alternative in these aspects? How soon is the change taking place?
Yes, TT is fast, reliable, and inexpensive (but no good for bid/ask studies).
I don't know when the change will happen, but soon.
I'm currently with DeepDiscountTrading using Sierra Chart, and these are the choices:
1) Rithmic Feed for .30 cents per contract.
2) CQG Feed for .10 cents per contract & $10/Mth.
3) CTS Feed for .50 cents per contract with a $25/Mth "Minimum".
Rithmic is slightly more expensive, except there is no historical tick data. Historical data is minute data only.
CQG is less per contract but more per month, and it is only for trade execution. A separate subscription data feed is needed for charting.
CTS is much more expensive.
For me it's down to two choices:
1) Use Rithmic or CQG, and subscribe to Sierra's data feed (stay with DDT and pay more).
2) Find another broker whose clearing firm will continue to offer TT at similarly low commissions (change brokers and pay the same).
I have been trading with T4 via crossland since the beginning of the year and while Howard at DDT has been great I can't say the same for crossland. The customer portal is terrible and does not update live. it is delayed by several minutes so if you're in a pinch it's impossible to know your "true" position. Also I just closed my account with them and to my surprise I was told they are holding $100 of my money for 45 days in case there is any platform fees which off course there isn't since I already paid for all this. I have had accounts with many clearing firms over the years and this has never once happened to me. I usually don't post much but I wanted anyone considering crossland to be aware of this.
I'm also with DDT and Crossland, and I'm a bit cautious at the moment. I like Crossland overall although I have been looking seriously at Advantage lately.
Crossland has been a bit more difficult in making account changes than Amp Clearing (which I have accounts with).
Overall my concern with Wedbush is that:
1. I don't know much about them.
2. They have the broker / banking side of things. Which raises concern around the whole Peregrine or MF Global situation.
According to the press release they plan to keep all the Crossland folks on and nothing will change. I hope that's the case, but I'm going to be cautious going forward.
