What's up everyone? All right. So the verdict is in is TD Ameritrade a suitable broker for day trading and I would say the short answer is yes, but there's a lot of nuances that you need to understand about using TD Ameritrade for active day trading. And so what I'm gonna do during this video is I'm going to show you some side-by-side comparison of me using TD Ameritrade while at the same time using a direct access broker which historically are the faster and are more popular among traders. I'm going to show you a couple of the ways that I kind of change the settings in TD Ameritrade to make it run faster so it would be more suitable for my strategy of trading.

Now as always, if you guys have questions you have comments on this video. Please leave them below if you want. Download my layout - TD Ameritrade I'll put a link below where you can check that out and if you enjoyed these videos, give me a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe to the channel. Alright, let's get into it.

Okay, so on my screen right now you can see the Thinkorswim platform. Now the first thing that I did in order to get this to run a little faster was increasing the memory usage from 768 up to 60 144. So now when I go to log in, what's gonna happen is the platform will run a little bit faster. So I'm gonna log myself in here now.

One of the things that I'm also going to show you is two other settings that will help you as an active day trader, make the most of the platform. These settings will basically make the platform run faster. More speed means more accuracy and hopefully more profit in your pocket as a trader. So now that I've got TD Ameritrade up, let me bring this up to my main screen so you guys can see my layout.

This is kind of my the layout that I've been using for the last few. Well I guess for the last few weeks I just kind of had it set up really like right like this and now I'll pull up my standard trading platform which is Lightspeed So this is a platform that I use for day trading pretty much every single day. and I'm also gonna pull up a platform here called Sterling which is a piece of software that we use for our students who are trading the simulator. But you can also use the Sterling trading software to trade real money with light speed with center point with Cmeg.

Really? with over a dozen different brokers that license the Sterling software, So the nice thing about learning Sterling is that you can trade that software with a lot of different brokers, You're not tied to one broker. Of course, when you learn to trade with TD Ameritrade you're really stuck with TD Ameritrade because they're the only ones that offer the thinkorswim platform now. I Generally find the platform to not be intuitive in the way that an active trader trades and so let's start at sort of the very beginning of why I feel that way. Well, this is their trade.

You click on the trade tab and then you go to active trader and typically what I'm looking for is a level two window which is what this is and an order entry window and you can see I've got the same thing right here in Lightspeed it's the level two window in the order entry window. Now what these windows give me the ability to do is to see what the stock is doing right now in terms of the price and I can set up an order. So let's say this stock a STC I want to buy it at, you know 225 I can put the order right there 225 and then I can just keep my mouse over the buy button and a second. I'm ready to take that trade.

All I have to do is click, buy and I'm in. That for me is is really helpful. Now in terms of direct access routing. If I want to send this to ARCA bat's Ajax Lightspeed Nasdaq I can choose which route I send it to those of you guys that don't understand direct access routing just to give you kind of a quick summary of what it is.

Basically what we have here on the level two is the market for that stock and the market has the best bid and the best Ask which is the best buyer and the lowest priced seller. And so there's the market for this stock. Every stock has its own market of best buyers and best sellers. Well, buyers and sellers all have to access the market in one way or another.

Now if you use Thinkorswim TD Ameritrade the way you would access the market would generally be just by clicking and I'll turn off the auto send, but it would just be by clicking right here and then pressing the Buy button. Alright, so you just be able to click and press the Buy button and you don't really know exactly how your order is getting sent to the market. Where's with the direct access broker? You know that you're sending this order straight through Nasdaq So if I place this order here with Nasdaq to buy 25, I'll see NS DQ right here at the market. It's very it's a very quick connection of like okay, that's my order.

I'm sending the order right to the market where as a big broker like TD Ameritrade er II trade, they often reroute your orders and you don't really often see them or know kind of where they show up and so you're a little bit disconnected from the market in that way. And that disconnection also creates a little bit of latency or lag between when you send your order and when you get filled. and I'll show you some examples of that lag. So my first kind of disappointment with TD Ameritrade is that I don't have a level Ii window that I'm able to also attach an order entry window to.

kind of like this and that's really all I want is a nice clean order entry window so I can pull up the stock I can click here and then I can click the buy or sell button. It's standard with most other brokers. It's also standard with E Trade but I'll never use E Trade again. You guys can check out the video of my E Trade review Why? that's the case TD Ameritrade Despite not having this order entry window, I can still work with and the reason is because of these buttons right up here.

So if you click when you're in the active trader window, you go over here to Active Trader and when you click on that, it pulls up this whole window right here. This is this area and this is where we see the current market for the stock. So you know I could put a an order for a hundred shares or whatever the case is I Click buy right now because I have auto send turned off. It's gonna prompt me with this this little confirm but once you click the auto send, as soon as you press that button, it's gonna send your order instantaneously so you're gonna go right to the market which is terrific.

So my process for using TD Ameritrade was I would see a stock I like a STC I would typically have it set for a thousand shares and I would click, buy Market or by the ask. Now you guys know that I don't usually like to use market orders. However, one thing that TD Ameritrade doesn't have is an offset. So right here if I want to get in, the ask is 22, so this would be right here I click this and it's 22.

Now if I click down here it pulls up 29, 35 and 37. You see how my order updates based on where I click. Well that's nice because if I want to get in at 19 and let's say I want to buy, you know a hundred thousand shares. There's not a hundred thousand shares for sale at that price.

So that means I'll have to buy shares from a seller at Twenty-one Twenty-two Twenty-three Twenty-four Twenty-five until my order is filled. And sometimes even with a thousand shares, you click the Buy button and right now there's only. Well, there's eighteen hundred shares for sale. There's only three hundred shares for sale right there at seventeen.

So because of that, if I clicked by the ask, I wouldn't fill the entire order and so as a result I started using the buy market. Now you can use hotkeys with TD Ameritrade which is cool. You go to settings up here, go to application settings, and then you go over to hotkeys. The downside is that the hotkeys are very limited.

which means this is a hotkey I set up to for shift one by market and what that means is it's gonna send a by market order for whatever I've typed in here is my share size and then control Z a sell market. So I'm gonna sell that market. whatever I have typed in right here in my share size. so I can't really sell half or something like that.

Let's look over here both in Sterling and in Lightspeed I can go to view and I go to settings I can go down here to hotkeys and this button right here. Control: X This sells half of my position five cents below the bid. So to be able to customize a hotkey like that really empowers me as a trader to do exactly what I want, get in quickly, get out quickly with the press of a button. Unfortunately, with TD Ameritrade it ends up being a lot more clicking and less keyboard because you have to click here.

Then you gotta click here and then you got to type here and that is all gonna take time and that's time that a stock could be squeezing up and you're not or dropping down and you're still holding the bag which is never a good thing. So let me show you one of the videos of me trading with TD Ameritrade Let me pull this up here. So this is a day here and we're let's see: I'm gonna trade both in my Lightspeed account on the left and in my TD Ameritrade account on the right. Alright so let's see and I want to show you when I take my first trade so we'll just to show you first.

this is a trade I take in Lightspeed So let's look at how fast this order goes through. I'm taking a trade on CEI Alright, so I'm watching it right here. Look at that. That's a crazy fast order.

I press the Buy button and almost instantaneously, it's my orders shown up. Let's watch that again. Click I'm in and just like that, I'm up. You know down $49 I was up 10 bucks.

I Mean that's how quickly you can get into a trade with Lightspeed Now let's show when I press the Buy button over at TD Ameritrade What happens? So we're gonna zoom here over to TD Ameritrade See I've been taking my first trade over there yet? Did you do okay? Here we go. Okay, so we TD Ameritrade looks like I've got my hand on the Buy button so I'm ready to press it back this up here. Okay, so and it looks like I'm in right now at 410 in my small account. So I've got my hand on the Buy button.

let's go back and play that one more time. So hands on the Buy button I click it and you can see that I feel pretty quickly. You know. Honestly, I was pretty impressed.

Is it as fast? No, because I click buy right here. So it took like maybe a second and a half for my order to show up, so it took a little bit longer, a little bit slower. No, that's probably okay for most day trades and that's why I would say that TD Ameritrade is a pretty great platform for day trading, but it's not quite as good as Lightspeed It's not quite as fast so there are main at 14 and now of course the only way for me to get out quickly is just to press the sell market button. Right now, when I press the sell market button, I'm just gonna hit the bid and get out in my Lightspeed account.

What I would do instead is I would say well I'm not gonna press the sell market button. What I'm gonna do instead is I'm gonna go under hockey's settings and I'm gonna try to get the best price by selling at the ass. I'm gonna sell my whole position at the ask price. Now you can do that.

You can click join the ask right here, but then if it doesn't work, you got to click the cancel all button and again I I Scraped these two hotkeys so you can work a little faster, but I discovered that the platform is not as quick to respond and if you try to push it too hard you can get yourself jammed up. and I did get myself jammed up on one trade where I pushed the platform a little too hard trying to take trades too quickly and I ended up with a position that I wasn't expecting to have and that end up costing me about $900 So let's look at that sell, all right. So I pressed the sell market button I click boom working and then it's gone. So you know in like you know by most standards, that's pretty fast right by most standards.

clicking by and clicking salad. having it go that fast is good by Lightspeed standards, you know. Lightspeed sets a little bit of a new standard. let's watch that again.

my buy order. look how fast that was. So sometimes traders you know will ask me Ross You know how are you able to trade so quickly and a lot of that does come down to the software. It's not to say that you can't make money with TD Ameritrade I'll show you you know of course today's a day or on this according, this was a day where I made 300 bucks there and I'll show you a couple other recordings where I did quite well there as well.

All right, So all right, so that's that for that recording. So let me pull that back out and let's check out another one. All right. So I'm gonna check out this recording here.

This was one. umm let's see. this is a stock called a PRN All right, so let's see there's see ya. See ya again.

You can see how fast the trades go through on the Lightspeed side. You back that up real quick. So let's watch. I'm gonna click the Buy button right here.

Clicked it and I'm in instantaneously instantaneous execution. Alright, now let's go to let's so this is a trade that I took here. so let's watch this. So I'm about to click the Buy button.

Clicked it. Alright. I got my two thousand shares a little slow to fill. we break that level.

I Click sell market. Well, unfortunately on this one the bid drops down and now I've got an issue where my orders just kind of. You know it. I sold two thousand shares at forty A and I'm trying to decide what what do I do Now it's dropping a little bit more I want to sell the ask? but I kind of, you know.

So now I'm in this situation where I wasn't able to move as quickly as I would have liked to have and the loss is sort of compounding and getting a little bigger so not not ideal there and I end up holding that for for a while kind of just now I'm sort of deer in the headlights on it cuz it's like, well, I really didn't want to I really wanted to get out of it sooner. So I gave back my three hundred dollars a profit there whereas in Lightspeed I'm up nine hundred and forty-two trading the same stock. Alright, so now let's look any. PRN Okay, so this is an interesting one.

Okay, so a PRN I clicked by, Watch this. a PRN click click and I clicked it twice. So what happened there? Why did that order window pop up on the second trade? Because I should be holding 4,000 shares of this right? and now I'm out with 474 dollars a profit. Not bad, but I clicked it twice the first order went through and so that's when I discovered that in the settings.

What you need to do in TD Ameritrade is you need to go to your settings application settings. You need to go to Active Trader and bring this from 500 milliseconds down to zero because what it's doing is it's stopping a double click from being two trays. Probably because there's some people that just naturally double click on everything and they don't intend to take two trades. So you've got to turn that down to order submission rate of zero.

And while you're in here, what you also want to do is go to system and change your quote speed to real-time no delay. Both of those will help speed up your trading. So I learned some of this through. you know trial and error and this is an example of a trade where you know my executions were pretty fast.

but I should have made twice. What? I made two times What? I made because I want 4,000 shares I only got filled 2,000 because of that that feature in the platform. Alright so as it turns out, the stock comes back down so probably it was. you know for the best.

Alright so let's see so let's look at another one here. So now I'm gonna show you an instance of where the platform kind of failed where it kind of let me down. Alright so on this one let's see. it looks like we're on CEI again and it looks like I did the old double click.

Alright so watch this. So I click buy I'm gonna about to click buy one and it popped up this even though I had Auto send turned on. so I was like what the heck So right now the platform is actually glitching because auto send is checked and this should be executing and so so this is very interesting and this was an issue that I brought to the attention at TD Ameritrade because I said this is not acceptable. it says that I have to market orders and both of them say they're working but my position so it shows as zero shares so I was like what's happening Note: this is right here.

my net position shows 4,000 shares right there it shows 4,000 but right here it shows zero and right down here it shows my quantity is zero. So what I'm now gonna do I'm confused about what's happening I've never seen this happen before and so I'm gonna right click my working order and I'm gonna click I'm gonna cancel it cuz I see how I'm scrolling around I'm like what the heck is going on so I'm like alright, cancel order? huh? Cancel order. That's weird I guess my order just for some reason didn't execute. Here's the thing though, it did execute and I'm actually holding 4,000 shares right now and I don't know it I can't tell because I don't see anything right here and I don't see anything down here and that's obviously a problem.

Now What? I didn't notice was right here. 10:37 This is showing that the order that just executed at 38 and I didn't notice that. So if I go back here, you'll see right? you know. Kind of like right here where where I guess that happened but I didn't notice that and and so that's where you could say oh well, Ross you know you weren't paying attention and and maybe that's because I'm not really good with a platform, but I still would say that it's unacceptable for a platform to accept your order and not update to show that you're holding the position.

That's crazy, right? That doesn't make sense. So this was really frustrating for me and what ended up happening. believe it or not as I left I went and had lunch, had a great lunch and I ended up coming back like two hours later. two hours later I come back and when I come back to my computer it still shows that I'm not holding the position and so I end up.

you know, typing in a different symbol and then I go back to see I and it shows that I'm holding four thousand shares and I'm down like 1,200 bucks. Now you guys know how volatile the market can be. Something like that I mean that could destroy a small account. So now let's look at this on I FM k because the same thing happened over here.

so I FM K once again on this one I'm gonna click the Buy button, it pops up the order and maybe in this case today. Chris sent I think I just pressed sent said and nothing happened. So I was like what is going on with this platform now anecdotally I Heard that a lot of people on this day cuz I did a video recap on it, a daily recap. Other people complain that they were having problems with TD Ameritrade and some people were speculating that maybe it's because of free Commission's so many more people are trading on the platform that these that that's why this happened I Have no idea I haven't used the platform long enough to know if this type of thing is a regular occurrence, but obviously my order didn't go through an I FM K.

so I had the same issue. even though auto send was clicked all of a sudden was clicked on I pressed by market it popped up this window and it didn't go through so you know it it and this one never went through. the order never went through I never took got a position on it, you know. And then again hours later I come back and discover that I'm holding 4,000 shares of CEI and on that day my account was only at like twenty five thousand five hundred.

So that put my account below the PTT minimum and basically I blow up an account. you know I mean I had to go add more money to it to keep trading and I was I was frustrated and disappointed. Alright, so now let's take a look at a day where the platform really did succeed quite well. So this is going to be a trade on a Pdn.

This will be a series of trades that I took on a Pdn, this stock squeezing up moving quickly and actually on this particular day, let's see, let me look for my first trade on AP DN Okay, here's the first trade. so I'm gonna click buy market twice 1 2 so watch this one - just like that. and now because I've turned off that setting and brought it down to 0 the order is that instantaneous. but I'm only only holding 3400 shares because I used well.

Actually, no, I'm just it's just feeling kind of slowly. All right, so it feels kind of slowly. Whatever. So I'm holding six thousand shares of the stock and this is a nice entry.

877 The stock is gonna rip through nine dollars and what I'm gonna do on this one is I'm actually gonna use the ladder. Alright, so I'm gonna use the ladder. Let me go back to where I Do it. Ok, so um, so I'm gonna use the ladder right here.

and first I click join the ask and I've got 3,000 share order on the ask at 96 and then what I decide to do is use the ladder to scroll up here from 858. I'm gonna scroll up to $9 93, 904, 905 and I'm gonna put orders up on the ask to sell. And that means as soon as the stock rips through 9, my orders well fill automatic automatically. So the current price here is 9 is you club.

Actually, it's showing the current price is 9 901. That's usually the price spot, but that's obviously not the case. So a little bit of I don't know latency there. But in any case, I'm gonna put up orders I put one at 8:09 one at 98, one at 808, 801, 99, and 808 and then I'm gonna scroll up a little further and I'm gonna put another one I think I thought I'd put another one a little higher than that, but maybe I didn't Alright, so in any case, I'm now waiting for the stock to rip through nine dollars.

oops. So there we go. So we just got that rip there. So watch it here.

there's nine and boom is it rips through. my orders are getting filled. so now I'm kind of like on autopilot because the way I've set up my orders on order entry ladder now ascent to say that you couldn't do the exact same thing with T America or with E Trade sorry with Lightspeed just by clicking and and actually saying you know I want to put my cell order? Let's say you know I'm gonna put a sell order at 63 I'm gonna put another one oh it's not shorter but let's just say I'll put one at 63 I'll put one at 303 and you just press a sell button so you know P ing I'll say I'm gonna put a sell order you know, one share. Whatever.

I'm gonna put one at 1926 I'm gonna put one oops. go down to one share. this is the one I want to be on I want to put one at 66 and I want to put one at? you know? let's say 96. All right now the second I'm like oh actually I changed my mind control queue.

cancelled all the open orders here I did setup the hotkey to cancel my open orders I went to hot keys ctrl Q cancel all so you know I've got it set up so I can do that. but I just found that this is not quite as fast. It's not quite as responsive it doesn't it? Just what wasn't quite as quick. Again, not to say that you can't make money on it.

Let's go back to that video. I'm up $2,800 on this stock right now so the stock is gonna keep going higher on my next trade. Let's zoom into it. My next trade on TV Well we can look at a trade that I take right here.

If we want this is a trade then gonna take in my Lightspeed account on the left. So I'm about to click the Buy button clicked it. I'm in at 69 instantaneous fill. super super fast we'll go over to TD Ameritrade TD Ameritrade For me, you know it's kind of like it's almost good training in a way for trading with the direct access broker because if you can make money in TD you're gonna do incredible in a direct access broker, You'll only make more money.

but the problem is and see how my order filled there? you know, kind of slow, but not bad. So it's kind of like it's kind of like those baseball players that are swinging the bat with that weight on the end of it like they're getting ready. They're kind of getting themselves up. It kind of feels like trading with TDM air trades.

Kind of like jogging with like heavy boots on. Can I Do it? Absolutely. Can I make money? Yes, Absolutely. Is it as fast as a direct access platform? No.

But it has one thing that this doesn't have as that it's Free Free. Commission's no commissions and that's a really compelling offer. That's something that's hard to, you know. turn your back on.

and so that's one of the reasons I do really like TD Ameritrade It's it's the best platform of the platforms out there that are free. Now prior to them dropping Commission's and going to free trading, it was like I don't know. Three or four dollars for every trade and Lightspeed is only two dollars for every trade. So at that time Lightspeed was the clear winner.

But now with Lightspeed continuing to be $2 for every trade plus Ecn fees, which is kind of like your toll for using a direct access route. and just to kind of break down the math for you, typically it's point zero zero two per share. So a thousand shares times point zero zero two. That's an extra two dollars.

All right. So you trade 10,000 shares, it's gonna be an extra 20 bucks. You trade a hundred thousand shares, it's gonna be extra two hundred dollars. And there's days where I've traded a hundred thousand shares.

So I've got two hundred dollars then in Ecn fees. plus if I took 20 different trades, I've got another forty dollars in commissions. So you're talking about two hundred forty dollars income in fees and commissions. Whereas those same traits and TD all entirely free, you know? So in the last year and a half, I've spent over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in commissions and that's what really got me asking myself is TD Ameritrade worth it Is it can I deal with the fact that it's a little bit slower and have an extra hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my pocket now at the same time over that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I've taken about four thousand trades. So you know if you figure over the course of four thousand trades, you know I mean an extra an extra ten dollars on each of those trades would be 40 grand. An extra twenty dollars on each of those trades to be 80 grand. You know if I'm if I was made, taking an extra 50 or $60 on every trade on average in Lightspeed because I'm a little faster.

that more than fills the gap in Commission. So I I want to say and really believe that what I spend in Lightspeed is totally worth it and that every penny I spend I get back in faster executions and getting in and out exactly where I want. but having traded with TD Ameritrade I can tell you that it's really not bad and depending on the strategy that you trade, it could work really well for you and the Commission's being zero. Again, it's really compelling so you know I'm back in here on Lightspeed taking these really quick trades right there I Just don't think I could have traded that fast in TD even with the hot keys and the occasional glitch in the platform, you know that one cost me 1,200 bucks, but you guys know some of these stocks are so volatile that a mess up like that potentially on a stock that's up a hundred percent could cost me 20 30, 40 thousand dollars.

It could have been the biggest loss of my career if I'd been holding 12,000 shares because I kept clicking the Buy button and I walk away and I come back and I'm down three dollars a share. You know that could have been the difference between a good year and a bad year just from one trade, so that's pretty scary and hopefully that doesn't continue to happen. Although I've heard other people say it's happened to them, you know, a knock on wood? It's never happened to me at Lightspeed and I've been trading there for years, so you know I think it's It's kind of one of those things that it depends on your strategy. and if you have a strategy that depends on being able to buy a tray a stock at 11.50 and quickly sell it at 12 before it gets halted going up, you know if you want to see those circuit breaker halt levels you're probably gonna want Lightspeed now I Can see when this stock is gonna get halted.

it's showing me right here. 1264 you can't see that on TD Ameritrade They don't have that information. You know this is something that acts and direct access brokers will have, but Ameritrade doesn't have it. So if you trade a large-cap strategy, if you trade a swing trade strategy, this is fine.

If you trade my strategy and you don't mind not being equipped with every single tool, you'd probably be fine and see how fast I sold that thousand shares of twelve. I mean let's just like look back at that for one second cuz I just you know, jumped in there for the quick break and where was that trade? Um, well it doesn't It doesn't matter that much, but you know it just goes to show how quickly you can trade with this platform if you want to move quickly. So I have hopefully helped give you a little bit of an understanding of my two cents on TD Ameritrade and I went in I went in skeptical and I'm coming out with the real belief that this is a great platform. It may not be great for every single strategy, but but it really is a pretty great platform and I would recommend it for most of my students.

You know, with the caveat that I do think Lightspeed will be faster and better, but when you're trying to save money on commissions, you know sometimes it is gonna make sense to go the route of up. TD Ameritrade as you're getting started and then once you've proven you can be profitable there. then at that point switching over to something like Lightspeed or the Sterling platform with any of the numerous brokers that do support it. and I also walked you guys through some of the settings and the application settings.

first on the the launch screen where you type in where you upgrade the memory, second one bring you active trader down to zero and third going on system and bring your quote speed to real-time Those of you guys Auto send right here turns off the confirmation so you can get in just with a click and you can trade really quickly to make Lightspeed or to make TD Ameritrade a better platform. I Would ask them to create offsets in the hot keys and allow you to customize that you're selling based on your position size because that would be awesome. That would make it so much faster. I Would also love to have an order entry window something like this that you could pop up as an active trader.

the trade window that they have have you know this is what it is and that just doesn't allow you to type in your orders and to me, it's super clumsy to click here and then have to go in here and click Edit and then from Edit: Click. That's just that's not that doesn't work for an active trader. So I think their platform could definitely be improved upon, but you know the question is, do they really cater to active traders? Are we the target demographic and I think that we're probably not. So I don't know that we'll see those improvements anytime soon, but if we do, it would make an even more compelling argument for me to use TD Ameritrade more and Lightspeed less.

All right you guys, So that's it. I'd love for you guys to give me your feedback, your thoughts, your comments below as always I respond to every comment post on my channel and if you do want to download my layout for TD Ameritrade I'll put the link down below and you can download the latest version that I'm using right now even if that you're watching is six months from now, a year from now or two years from now. All right. So as always, thank you guys for watching this video.

Thumbs up if you enjoyed it And make sure you subscribe to the channel for more videos Just like this. Alright, see you guys soon! Hey did you know that I Go live every single morning between 9:00 and 9:15 to stream my pre market watchlist. subscribe to channel. Press the bell for the alert and you'll get the notification.

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