Don't Even Try To Daytrade Using An Online Broker.
Q: You cannot daytrade with any real success, unless you are able to respond within seconds for your buy and sell decisions, to price movements. If you are trading with a broker and doing okay, that's great. Keep up the good work. Look into direct access brokers and you will find out the differences. The costs are very similar to E-trade.
A:
I disagree. What you say imo only has relevance if you are using the
brute force method of jumping onto a fast-moving trend. If you are
lying in wait for the reversal time is not so critical and you often
get hit on the bid by some loser who is bailing on his failing trade.
Once I get an order into the system, a fill seldom takes more tha
seconds assuming the order was marketable, and I'm talking about
thinly traded options. Wading through the http screens is a pain, but
mostly because I trade through a 56kb dialup line, a DSL connection
would make the whole deal pretty effortless. Too bad my local phone
company is lame.
True. If I'm already on the trading page at Ameritrade when I hear
something that will move a stock, I can always beat the crowd. About 30
seconds after placing the trade, I'll watch the bid swell and the stock
take off. What amazes me, is that 5-10 minutes later there are still
peope piling in. After that second surge, is when I would usually sell,
and then invariably watch it correct back to where I bought it and buy
it again if I wanted to keep it, and by the next day it would surpass
the original peak. That's what I did with VGR a week or so ago.
It's been awhile since I've been home during the day to do it, but
its nice to know nothing's changed much.
As you are trading options, you are not in the same situation as most
day-traders. Options do not have the same order routing choices as
stocks. If you are trading stocks, a direct access platform is a
massive advantage.
It would not matter much with stocks either, if you are relying on the
market to come to your predetermined bid price, as you say, but it
sure as hell matters when it comes to getting out if you find you have
made a mistake and the stock is falling like a rock.