8/20/07 General Trade Log / Idea Sharing

[AbeSmith 10]

Abe,

Take a look at TS's financial data on that report...

 

 

You know what I immediately see? A bunch of ZERO's in the customer segregated columns... You will also see that TS futures division has LESS net capital than OEC. I'd be curious to know WHY there are zero's listed on this CFTC report. In case you're not sure why this part is important, check this link out - http://www.cftc.gov/tm/tmint-14.htm

 

Now, the securities division (stocks) of TS is large - $65mill of net capital. The futures division has less than $1mill.

 

You have to remember that TS has a large STOCK business. That's their bread and butter, which is obvious on this report. You are looking at trading futures, so make sure you are comparing apples-to-apples.

 

As Cooter pointed out it looks like the company you're referring to is not Tradestation.

 

 

One last thing Abe - the reason I suggest looking at these reports is to get a feel for the broker you will be dealing with. The last thing you want is to become a part of the next Refco. Unfortunately, with as much due diligence as we are able to do, you just simply do not know who, where, and when will be the next Refco. That's why I suggest reviewing that report throughout the year. If you see customer assets dropping swiftly, that should throw up a red flag, esp in the futures biz since it's a zero sum game in the end. In other words, every day money is exchanging hands and you'd like to see the money your broker is handling getting larger over time, which means that broker is attracting serious traders.

 

What would be interesting though, is to see how deep into a broker's financials you can get... Since many are not publicly traded, a lot of that is private... It would be nice to be able to dive into the numbers even more...

 

Excellent advice Brownsfan. It's good policy to look into a company that you might do business with. Comparing a broker's customer assets with other brokers can be useful info. It looks bad if the customer assets decrease relative to other brokers.

 

 

It's pretty simple Abe - if you want to use VBC's, you simply cannot do that @ TradeStation. Their version of VBC's are not accurate in the least bit. As you've seen, trading is hard enough as it is w/o having worry if your charts are accurate or not.

 

If you decide to not use VBC's, TS is not bad at all. I've used them for charting before (not to trade thru) and their charting software is nice. If the VBC's were true, I'd probably still be using them for charting to be honest. I've read mixed reviews on their DOM software and I was not impressed the last time I looked at it.

 

I hope they fix the VBC flaw in their next update. It should not be difficult IMO.

[AbeSmith 10]

Plus, Abe, people like Soultrader, John Carter and Hubert...they use TS for CHARTING not for their actual broker. For that they are using Infinity, and Introducing Broker for TransAct.

 

That's good to know Tin. I will look into Infinity and Introducing Broker. I assume the reason they are using Infinity and Introducing Broker has to do with the speed of fills and perhaps lower commission.

[brownsfan019 17]

Sorry guys, my bad. It was late last night and I thought that read TradeStation. My bad.