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I wanted to start a new topic on recent problems with major retail brokers. With the recent dropping of commissions and subsequent massive influx of new retail traders (for many reasons), the major retail brokers have all run into slow downs, outages, backlogs and other failures. I've been aware for sometime that my fills on both TOS and IB have had intermittent problems. The recent thinkorswim outage was a real pain to me and I didn't get hurt by it, just massively inconvenienced, no doubt others were hit in the pocket book. I'm a big fan of TOS, mainly because I've been on their system for a long time, their rates aren't the greatest but they don't have any other fees. The problem I see is that there is no end in sight for these brokers to be overloaded. Little or no commissions, zero or very little account size, and massive new resources needed on their part to solve the problem. I don't have a problem with a minimum account size and I would even be willing to pay a little more in fees or even a monthly tithe for a platform to get better fills and steadier service. I'm starting the broker search now, I'm not looking forward to any of this, I was happy with what I had but I don't think I have that any more. I'll post my efforts here if anybody is interested and would appreciate feedback from others as well.

No expert here, but after being around for about 3 months, hopefully the below tips will be helpful for you: Official Trades: Expect to not get fills for more than 1/4 of the 'official' trades. Watch for discussion threads. Try to do some analysis of your own (will take a couple of months of following trades to really get a hang of it, but read, ask questions, you'll pick it up). If you think you'll like some of the 'discussion' trades, set a limit prior to the official entry and hope for a fill. These have been my best trades thus far. Follow the 'Unofficial Trades' thread. LOTS and LOTS of great trade ideas (and discussion) that never make it to the official (lots of times due to liquidity). If you are following these threads, you'll be able to get into about 1/3 or more of the trade suggestions (official or not) even if you are only doing stuff after hours. Also PAY ATTENTION to earnings dates so you know what needs to be closed when. Kim obviously only tracks the official trades, so if you take on some that are unofficial, you want to make sure you know when to get out and make sure to close out. Do not hold through earnings. Be patient with the trades, don't chase. You'll get a feel for it much better after the first couple months. Broker: If you are a newer trader, I would personally stay away from IB. They do NOT cater to new/beginner traders. Their customer support has never been bad, but they do have an expectation of knowledge from those using their platform. Which by the way is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. I'm currently using Tradier Brokerage. Commissions = $40 per month (unlimited options trades using Steady Options Coupon Code) per account. If you are interested in a $45 stocks + options unlimited, I have one for that as well. If you go this route, I would highly recommend using the DynamicTrend TREND platform ($30 / month - one fee, but can be used for all of your accounts) as the web platform from Tradier is worse than IB's. Trend though is AMAZING, and makes Tradier 100% worth it. Over the last week since I've found Trend, I've entered and gotten the exact same fills from both brokers, but IBs position is always worse due to commissions. I'll likely be moving my last account over from IB to Tradier in the near future. NOTE: I also tried ONE and OptionVue (which you get some free trial time through Tradier to try them out) and hated managing positions in them. I was VERY tempted to try Tastyworks for their platform alone. Commissions on par with IB, but a platform that is SOOOOOOOOOO much easier to use. Hope these comments are helpful. Portfolio: I was also struggling with this. I couldn't find anything that would easily take several transactions correllate them to a strategy and bind them to an account so I have lots of ways of tracking my P/L and current balances. I finally found this one: https://www.tradeportfoliomanager.com/ This does not tie into any brokers (have to enter all trades manually) but the tracking, reports, and even risk profiles are great. And they are VERY responsive about feature requests and bugs. And the price is right...$22/month. All told, I have the following monthly fees for managing all my trading at the moment: Tradier - $40 per account (x3) / $120 TradePortfolioMgr - $22 TREND - $30 SteadyOptions - $125 Total: $297 ($80 of which is in my IRA accounts) Good luck!

Hi guys, I need some advice from you. I live in Netherlands and I want to open one account in US that allows me to trade options and our volatility trades. Does someone here trade from Europe? Can you give me advice on a broker that I can open my account? Thanks