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I don't option trade, but I don't think Fidelity is really that fair of a comparison for option trading, they don't market themselves as an active trading platf

I don't option trade, but I don't think Fidelity is really that fair of a comparison for option trading, they don't market themselves as an active trading platform the way Ameritrade, Etrade or IB do. After the outages, I don't see why a sophisticated trader who's doing option trading would trust Robinhood. I trade at IB and am very happy there. Just my 2 cents.

filoleg 6y ago
I don't have the exact numbers for outages for every platform, but it seems like during the most recent RH outage in March, Ameritrade and Vanguard were down as well[0]. Which only fuels my initial suspicion that the rest aren't any better when it comes to outages. Why do you like IB? Genuine question, because that's the one I've never tried, but now I am curious to try it out, so I want to know what the major things that drew you to it are. 0. https://www.barrons.com/articles/robinhood-trading-app-has-outage-amid-heavy-volume-51583165342 https://www.barrons.com/articles/robinhood-trading-app-has-o...
- lbwtaylor 6y ago
  Their margin rates. I'm not interested in derivatives (don't trust myself not to flub it), I prefer old fashioned margin. I understand it better and it works for me. IB prices their rates with a spread based on the fed funds rate (I think), rather than just grabbing some random number out of the sky. This stock market upheaval some other brokers are trying to have competitive margin rates, but in the past downturn when I was broker shopping, IB was blowing others away with ~2% rates while everyone was at ~7%. IB is very much targeting advanced consumers all the way up to small funds and trading shops, so you can do a lot on their platform if you're interested.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    Ah, I see, makes sense. Thanks for providing this explanation. I really appreciate this perspective. I am way more into options trading, while keeping my savings in regular stocks, so I don't manually trade stocks much. But it is still good info to know, in case I change my mind on it later.

filoleg 6y ago

I don't have the exact numbers for outages for every platform, but it seems like during the most recent RH outage in March, Ameritrade and Vanguard were down as well[0]. Which only fuels my initial suspicion that the rest aren't any better when it comes to outages. Why do you like IB? Genuine question, because that's the one I've never tried, but now I am curious to try it out, so I want to know what the major things that drew you to it are. 0. https://www.barrons.com/articles/robinhood-trading-app-has-outage-amid-heavy-volume-51583165342 https://www.barrons.com/articles/robinhood-trading-app-has-o...

lbwtaylor 6y ago
Their margin rates. I'm not interested in derivatives (don't trust myself not to flub it), I prefer old fashioned margin. I understand it better and it works for me. IB prices their rates with a spread based on the fed funds rate (I think), rather than just grabbing some random number out of the sky. This stock market upheaval some other brokers are trying to have competitive margin rates, but in the past downturn when I was broker shopping, IB was blowing others away with ~2% rates while everyone was at ~7%. IB is very much targeting advanced consumers all the way up to small funds and trading shops, so you can do a lot on their platform if you're interested.
- filoleg 6y ago
  Ah, I see, makes sense. Thanks for providing this explanation. I really appreciate this perspective. I am way more into options trading, while keeping my savings in regular stocks, so I don't manually trade stocks much. But it is still good info to know, in case I change my mind on it later.