Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I had a Scottrade account that I pulled the majority of my funds out of. I probably left 5% then forgot about it. Can somebody please give me their opinion. How does it stack up to, say tradestation.
Trading: Equities, index options and futures/futures options
Posts: 190 since Apr 2010
Thanks Given: 66
Thanks Received: 198
I find it to be especially good for options trading since its creator (Tom Sosnoff) specialized in options. Good for stock or futures swing trading but poor for day trading compared to Tradestation, Sierra, Multicharts or Ninja.
I have been using TOS for many years and find their platform has improved greatly even for day trading futures . Their round trip prices are a little higher for futures but that is the cost of doing business with a company that doesn't charge you inactivity fees or data fees . I have tried other platforms and always end going back with TOS .
I have never tried Trade Station or Ninja so they may be better , I don't know .
Software runs bulky? Yes
Too much unwanted stuff? Yes
Uses too much memory? Yes
Lags during fast market? Yes, Yes and Yes
Better trade execution? Absolutely No
Best Options platform? Probably Yes
Ease of trading Options Spreads? Yes
One account to trade all? Futures, Options on Futures, Stocks & ETFs, Options, Forex, Mutual Funds? Yes!!
I agree with what the others above have said about the benefits and downsides of thinkorswim. I've recently moved from Thinkorswim to Tradestation because Tradestation can auto trade your algorithms, ToS cannot.
Tradestation's backtesting capability is also much more capable than ToS with advanced analytics (ToS just gives you a list of simulated trades, which you can export to excel for analysis). The commissions are more competitive with tradestation and you get longer historical tick data.
However, there are some things I definitely like about TD Ameritrade over tradestation----they seem to have their act together much more than tradestation. The setup process is very clear and everything is clearly presented. Tradestation on the other hand has a very complicated fee schedule, and a lot of conflicting information on their site (says free tick data for Select and Go plans, then goes on to list fees for all the data during setup. Turns out it is free though). It also took about a week for my tradestation account to get approved, but there was zero communication about that and I thought there was something wrong with my account (I could log in, but most links would give me an error).
Thinkscript is also much more efficient than easylanguage IMO (you can achieve more with less coding) but not as efficient as Pinescript (tradingview). It's a shame you can't auto-trade with ToS. ToS is also slightly more capable charting out of the box, with basic things like VWAP built in---but tradestation still has excellent charting and you can achieve what you need with a little more work. I'll be keeping ToS for options analysis, but I'll be executing the trades on tradestation for lower commissions.
I've been using TOS for 4 years ... still use it for charting. I switched to Tradovate for my actual futures trading account because
TOS has a habit of freezing for minutes at a time during the market open period. The OnDemand feature is mostly useless
as the data feed on futures must come in way more quickly than it can handle.
Nevertheless, I still use TOS because the charting is excellent. Trading, not so much.
