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.
Why did you decide to close your lightspeed account? Are you planning on doing any post on that?
No post. The borrows weren’t great (they clear through Penson) and it sucks for trading OTC stocks. For my purposes Speedtrader is better.
What is the minimum deposit? 25k?
thx
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.**
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.
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.
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.
What customizations did you do to the layout that Nate helped with?
I forget many of them. Order defaults for different exchanges was one of the biggies, setting level 2 to show 4 decimal places.
IB second, Sogotrade third (platform sucks but great borrows).
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.
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 🙁
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.
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?
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.
Unless you recently caught CBAT it had 12000% gain and 6200% gain in the last two months.
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.
Im sorry forgot to ask, does Lightspeed offer ECN books to view seperately? I know Speedtrader alows you to view the Islnd book.
GSCO – I do not know the answers to those questions. You will have to ask Lightspeed.
This free sharing of ifronmation seems too good to be true. Like communism.
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?
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!
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.
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.
Speedtrader now has a $15K minimum to open an account. I am being granted a large volume of a pink sheet stock as an employment incentive. I’d like to be able to cash out some portion of that portfolio over time. Can you make some suggestions on how to set that up?
There are very few brokers that will take Pinksheet stock certificates. The few that do will charge obscene fees. Call the broker to be sure they will take it before opening an account. Scottsdale Securities is the only one I know offhand that will take most OTC stock certificates.
Hi Michael whats your thoughts on the new Speedtraderpro that clears thru ETC? They have over 10,000 symbols to short and can find borrows too! Also at .0025 p/s this seems better than IB. I would like to hear what you have to say about this.
ETC has some pretty good borrows but most of the time they won’t have shares in the best setups. This is similar to IB. As for commissions, it really varies based on how many shares you will trade. I still like IB because they have by far the best executions on listed stocks. But Speedtrader Pro is definitely an interesting option.
Thanks for getting back to me. Well I have an IB account which i just need to refund. I do short supernovas mostly smallcaps and I rarely short OTCs. I also love IB especially now more than ever since DAS allows you to use DAStrader with an IB account. Unfortunately that costs $150 a month but worth it since you can have otc/pink level2. The DAS platform is really good for daytrading and Im used to it. However after finding out about Speedtrader Pro im finding it difficult to decide! BTW if you generate $499 or more in commissions a month than the platform is free.
Hi Michael – Do you still use SpeedTrader today? How are their borrows, and how do they compare to ETRADE for borrowing? I’m not very satisfied with ETRADE’s borrows right now. Thanks!
I still use Speedtrader although not as much as I used to and I don’t recommend them. The only reason I continue to use them is the low commissions I have with them. Their borrows aren’t good at all and are likely worse than Etrade. Centerpoint is by far the best for short selling (CenterpointSecurities.com).
CenterpointSecurities
Minimum for account opening is USD 50’000