See the video for my review of Speedtrader after using it for a few weeks. Much thanks to Nate of the InvestorsUnderground stock chat for urging me to try SpeedTrader and helping me to set it up.
Disclosure: Short 10,000 BLUG. No positions in any other stock mentioned. I am an affiliate of InvestorsUnderground and Speedtrader. This blog has a terms of use that is incorporated by reference into this post; you can find all my disclaimers and disclosures there as well.
This entry was posted on April 14, 2010, 1:43 pm and is filed under All Categories, Trading Strategy, Trading Tools / Software, Video Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
I write about stocks and other investments. I am not a registered investment adviser and I will not and cannot give personalized investment advice. If you wish for personalized investment advice, please consult with someone who is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). These individuals are qualified to help you; also, find one to whom you pay an hourly fee, to ensure that your adviser has no conflicts of interest. To find a CFP near you, visit the CFP Board’s website.
When I write about a stock that I beneficially own, I will attempt to disclose that fact at the end of an article in which I mention that stock, unless I own the stock in a hedge fund, mutual account, managed account or other account that I do not control. Because this is a day-trading blog I may close or re-open a position in a stock without timely notification of the readers of this blog. This blog is for informational purposes only and you should not consider anything I write to be investment advice.
I will use my best efforts to disclose any conflicts of interest of which I am aware with regard to stocks, companies, or products about which I write.
I have never been sanctioned for violations of securities laws, and I have never been barred from the securities industry or convicted of any felony or misdemeanor whatsoever. However, I make no guarantees about the accuracy of my statements and I will not necessarily update statements that later turn out to be false. Because I aim for accuracy, I encourage anyone who finds errors to use the contact form to point them out to me.
I provide the material on this site for informational purposes only. No mention of a particular security constitutes a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold that or any other security, nor does it mean that any particular security, portfolio of securities, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. I cannot and do not assess, verify or guarantee the adequacy, accuracy or completeness of any information, the suitability or profitability of any particular investment or methodology, or the potential value of any investment or informational source. Site users bear sole responsibility for their own investment research and decisions. Anything written on this website is solely the opinion of the author unless it is clearly and expressly stated as fact.
Category labels are not necessarily correct descriptions of articles in those categories.
I post comments about stocks on Twitter and those comments may appear on my blog in a sidebar. My disclosure policy and trading policy does not apply to my posts on Twitter or anywhere else on the internet (such as Motley Fool CAPS and Yahoo! Finance message boards), only my blog itself. The only disclosure policy I will follow when making posts on Twitter or websites other than this blog is that I will use best efforts to disclose when I hold a position in a stock.
I will occasionally tweet about stocks I trade. My tweets will often be delayed and thus attempting to trade based on my tweets will likely lead to losses. I discourage anyone from making trades based on my tweets. My tweets are not recommendations to buy or sell a stock. They are for informational and educational purposes only to give my readers a feel for how I trade and to convey my opinion on stocks about which I may write.
Taxes
I may occasionally write about tax issues for traders. I have no training in tax law (or any kind of law) and nothing I write is to be construed as tax, financial, or legal advice. I recommend The Tax Guide for Traders by Robert Green. After purchasing the book I retained Green's firm to prepare my taxes and they currently prepare my taxes. I receive no money from the firm for promoting them and the only money I receive from recommending them comes from my Amazon.com affiliate link.
Recommendations and Affiliates
I only recommend products or services that I believe are useful. For some products or services I recommend I am an affiliate and receive a percentage commission based on product or service sales from those clicking my affiliate links. Every product for which I am an affiliate I am also a happy customer and I am an affiliate because I like the service or product. I used to be an affiliate of InvestorsUnderground (IU) stock chat, for which I received 50% of a new subscriber's first month's payment and 25% on an ongoing basis. I no longer recommend InvestorsUnderground and I have not received any affiliate payments from them since December 2010. I am no longer a member of InvestorsUnderground stock chat; my membership ended at the end of 2010. Please see this post on why. I subscribed to IU since its inception at the beginning of 2009 and I paid the standard rate of membership for charter members, which was $99/quarter (I also was a member of the free predecessor chat, Green on the Screen, for 6 months starting in summer 2008). I am an affiliate of SpeedTrader (although I have never earned affiliate commissions from them); I use them and recommend them to any person who actively daytrades OTC stocks. I am a happy customer of Amazon.com and all my links for books use my affiliate link. I am an affiliate of Timothy Sykes. Read on for more information on my relationship with Timothy Sykes. In the future, I may enter into additional financial arrangements for recommendations or affiliations. I will attempt to keep you informed of the details of any such arrangements.
My Relationship with Timothy Sykes
I am an affiliate of Timothy Sykes, for which I receive 35% of the purchase price of any product ordered using my link. I am a TimAlert lifetime member (for which I paid $2,000) and a lifetime subscriber to PennyStocking Silver (for which I paid $1350); I have also purchased Sykes’ DVDs Pennystocking 1 & 2 and Sykes' Learning Level 2 DVD (I have since given away my copy of Pennystocking 1 in a contest on this blog and I have re-sold my copy of Learning Level 2). I received the TimRaw DVD as part of the 2008 Las Vegas seminar I paid for and attended; I received TimTactics and TimFundamentals Part Deux as part of the 2009 Las Vegas seminar package that I paid for and attended. At both of Sykes' seminars I attended he bought a round or drinks for me and everyone else at the post-seminar party. At the 2009 Vegas seminar I also purchased $250 ($300 with tip) worth of drinks for everyone (pursuant to the promise on my blog of buying a round of drinks). I moderate/administer Tim Sykes' TimAlerts stock chatroom, for which I am paid based on the average number of people in chat during trading hours. I also assist with Sykes' Trading Challenge and am paid for that. I collaborated with Tim Sykes on the Read SEC Filings DVD published by Tim's company, Bullship Press, and I receive royalties on every sale. I spoke at Sykes' 2010 seminar and as compensation I received free admission and free dinner the first night of the conference as well as a copy of the DVD that was made from the seminar (The New Rules of Pennystocking). I will attempt to keep you informed of any changed or additional aspects of my relationship with Timothy Sykes in the future.
Comment Policy
Ownership of and responsibility of the comments remains with those who post the comments. I am not responsible for the statements of those who leave comments. I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to the reasons that the comment(s) in question are spam, defamation or obscene.
Privacy Policy
I use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit this website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
* Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. * Google's use of the DART cookie enables it and its partners to serve ads to my users based on their visit to my sites and/or other sites on the Internet. * Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.
Email Privacy Policy
Users’ email addresses will never be sold to anyone, ever, whether given to me by signing up for my email list or by leaving a comment.
Privacy Limitations
The only personal information I currently collect consists of email addresses, IP addresses, and information related to user comments and emails. I may disclose users’ email addresses, IP addresses, comments, emails, or any other information regarding users, pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters) if I have a good faith belief that the response is required by law. This may include respecting requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where I have a good faith belief that the response is required by law under the local laws in that jurisdiction, apply to users from that jurisdiction, and are consistent with generally accepted international standards. I may also share information when I have a good faith belief it is necessary (a) to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, (b) to prevent imminent bodily harm, (c) to comply with these Terms of Use, (d) to respond to claims that any information published on this website violates the rights of third parties, or (e) to protect the interests of my users or others. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, courts or other government entities.
Arclite theme by digitalnature | powered by WordPress
#1 by Shumail on April 14, 2010 - 3:29 pm
Why did you decide to close your lightspeed account? Are you planning on doing any post on that?
#2 by Reaper on April 14, 2010 - 3:51 pm
No post. The borrows weren’t great (they clear through Penson) and it sucks for trading OTC stocks. For my purposes Speedtrader is better.
#3 by Alex on April 14, 2010 - 6:23 pm
What is the minimum deposit? 25k?
thx
#4 by Reaper on April 14, 2010 - 6:54 pm
http://speedtrader.com/open_openaccount.php
# $25,000 minimum to open a pattern day trading account*
# $2,000 minimum to open a regular margin account.
# $500 minimum to open a regular cash account.**
#5 by ChopStockTrader on April 14, 2010 - 6:40 pm
Thats it I am sold. I need one more pay check to dump in my savings and then I am opening an account. Thanks for the review. I will try to use your affiliate link when I open it up.
#6 by Reaper on April 14, 2010 - 6:58 pm
Because of my love of short selling I could never use SpeedTrader as my only (or even main) brokerage. But if you trade OTC/Pinksheets long a lot then it is a good brokerage.
#7 by ChopStockTrader on April 14, 2010 - 8:40 pm
Just quickly, because I am personally going through the epiphany of how much easier it is to pick stock to sell rather than b/o…who do you recommend for say a second or third account. I was considering an IB account as well.
#8 by Ryan on April 14, 2010 - 11:21 pm
What customizations did you do to the layout that Nate helped with?
#9 by Reaper on April 15, 2010 - 7:07 am
I forget many of them. Order defaults for different exchanges was one of the biggies, setting level 2 to show 4 decimal places.
#10 by Reaper on April 15, 2010 - 7:06 am
IB second, Sogotrade third (platform sucks but great borrows).
#11 by Greg on April 26, 2010 - 9:47 pm
Good review. I love the beginning about being a fool for ‘investing’ in penny stocks. I am looking at IB, Sogo, and Speedtrader now, specifically because of what you showed on the availability of routing to all the different market makers. Nice.
Pingback: My thoughts on various brokers « Reaper Trades
#12 by Alex on August 25, 2010 - 12:45 am
Hi Reaper! Can you help me please. if I open an account with $500, can I trade pink sheets and otcbb without any fees for month. Only trade fee?
P.S. Sorry for my eng, i’m from Ukraine
#13 by Reaper on August 25, 2010 - 8:15 am
Alex – if you made over 20 trades in a month you would only have to pay the $10 or $15 fee for the Pink sheet level 2. Of course you also have to consider commissions. It would be next to impossible to make money trading with so little money in an account.
#14 by GSCO on August 27, 2010 - 11:54 pm
Hey there Reaper! Im interested in Speedtrader but im not a big otc/pinky trader, im just looking for a better direct access broker than who i currently have so the question is how is Speedtrader for trading Nasdaq/NYSE issues? Also can u see premarket activity on your intraday charts?
#15 by Reaper on August 28, 2010 - 8:26 am
If you don’t ever want to trade OTC/pink sheets, considering going with Lightspeed … they have a more customizable HOD list (but suck for OTCs). Speed does show premarket in its charts.
#16 by GSCO on August 30, 2010 - 3:00 am
Thanks and one other thing does Lightspeed offer premarket in their charts…the reason i keep asking is ive seen some brokers only show tick data in premarket.
#17 by GSCO on August 30, 2010 - 3:14 am
Im sorry forgot to ask, does Lightspeed offer ECN books to view seperately? I know Speedtrader alows you to view the Islnd book.
#18 by Reaper on August 30, 2010 - 6:50 am
GSCO – I do not know the answers to those questions. You will have to ask Lightspeed.
#19 by Ethica on November 15, 2011 - 11:50 am
This free sharing of ifronmation seems too good to be true. Like communism.
#20 by GSCO on August 31, 2010 - 11:23 am
Appreciate it but lastly i think im gonna go with Speedtrader because i keep seeing reviews that their platform is buggy ,quotes freeze alot…and customer service stinks…..do you have any imput on this?
#21 by Reaper on August 31, 2010 - 11:34 am
u mean LIghtspeed? Hmm, I can’t recall if their platform was buggy. It has been 5 months since I used it. Sorry my memory isn’t better!
#22 by GSCO on August 31, 2010 - 12:03 pm
No problem so to conclude do you think that Speedtrader would still be a good all around broker for trading Nas/NYSE issues? Sorry to bother u man but the only reason that i am is because u have first hand experience with them and selecting the right broker can be a PITA especially since mnie has level 2 issues.
#23 by Reaper on August 31, 2010 - 12:06 pm
I have once had DAStrader freeze on me, right after the DNDN unhalt. If you trade super-busy things like that you might have to change your settings to not update data every tick. The program will crash on me occasionally (rarely) but it takes only 10 seconds to restart it. But other than that I have never had problems trading listed stocks. I have never had a problem with fills, but again, 95% of what I trade there is OTC, so I really don’t have much experience with speed on listed stocks. Ask @investorslive (on twitter) if he has anything to add.