I guess a lot has changed since this blog was technically active. One thing I decided to do in the last year was forsake a decent vacation to Hawaii or somesuch, and instead my wife and I enrolled in the Trading Academy. It was a strange route we took to bring us to the point where we decided to trade stocks, but I think it was worth it.
We were one of the last classes to be taught on CyberTrader.
CyberTrader was a fairly well respected broker and platform for traders. It has a decent commission rate for trades, and although I don’t know what to compare it to, it’s reliability seemed great. During class it was fully disclosed that CyberTrader was being purchased by Schwab, and the reassurances were there that the commissions were going to be grandfathered in–so the implication was to “hurry up and get in to lock in your rates.” When joining Schwab, CyberTrader was going to get realtime data feeds and additional news sources for free, and access to Schwab’s banking and other features, as well as a bigger pool of stocks to short. The CyberTrader platform was going to merge with StreetSmart Pro–at the expense of losing a couple of windows that you could monitor at one time. For the level of trading I do, the loss seemed inconsequential, and the gains very attractive.
In the back of my mind, I knew disaster was lurking, but I figured that two financial organizations with so much on the line couldn’t afford to screw around, and they had to get this right.
A Perfect Catastrophe
My fears were right. Mind you, I’m not trading “for real” yet. I’m using what’s called Demo Mode, where you place fake-trades on realtime data. You can’t accurately place limit orders, but other commonly used features work as expected, and you can hone your skills until you’re confident enough to jump in.
However, minor features and functions that many traders rely on are gone. It really feels like you’re operating blindly while trying to place a trade. And, again, remembering that I’m not trading for real, but execution times are horrible. Closing a short position doesn’t work–instead you enter a conflicting long position simultaneously.
There’s no indicator of your day’s profit or loss.
There are other restrictions that are annoying–you are unable to place short trades between 4:00 and 4:15pm. Gah!
Other horror stories can be gleaned from reviews and forum postings on
elitetrader.com.
They really should have known better. I should have known better than to believe that this would only result in a better situation for traders. I was suspicious, yet hopeful.
I’ve invested a lot of time into learning this platform, and since I’m unable to trade for real anyway, I’ll give it a little time to see if Schwab can make CyberTraders happy. If not, I’m shopping for a new platform.
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