How to find the "ideal" day trading product suite, based on several criteria?

Glefdar

Active member
Having used TOS and Webull, and now looking at opening an Interactive Brokers, account, different pros/cons have become apparent to each platform. The following is a list of the best features I've observed and which platform offered them:

  1. Withdrawal of unsettled funds. TD Ameritrade allows it, but not WeBull and it looks like Interactive brokers doesn't allow it either.
    (Meaning: if my account had $50,000 in it on Monday, I could make five day trades with each using a $10,000 position size. If each of the five trades was a 10% gain, I could then initiate withdrawal of the $5,000 profit into my bank account at the end of the day. By contrast, if withdrawal of unsettled funds is not allowed, withdrawing the $5,000 profit on Thursday [T+2] would require making sure that my total trading volume was only $50,000 across both Tuesday and Wednesday. E.g. by doing five $5,000 position size trades during each of those two days, so that by Thursday morning there was still $5k of unused and thus fully settled funds available to withdraw).
    I've found that withdrawing all profits at the end of each trading day really helps with tilt control and risk management, so I don't want to lose that ability.
  2. Ability to trade from 4am premarket onwards. WeBull and Interactive Brokers offer it, but not TD Ameritrade.
  3. Commission-free options trading. WeBull offers it, but not TD Ameritrade or Interactive Brokers.
  4. Trade Ladder / Active Trader Widget that is well designed for scalping. TOS has it, but WeBull's ladder is awful (doesn't work during extended hours, poorly designed and cumbersome zoom ability) and I'm not sure if the Interactive Brokers ladder can easily zoom in/out to change the price interval between rows but it looks from YouTube videos like it doesn't have zoom in/out buttons like the TOS ladder does.
  5. Extensively configurable buy/sell buttons that can size positions based on % of net liquid. WeBull has buttons that let you automatically purchase an amount of shares equal to 10% of your available cash balance, for example. This is a helpful way to quickly manage risk and avoid accidentally risking more than you wished when making split second scalping decisions.
  6. 0DTE options trading during the last hour of the session. TD Ameritrade (and I'm assuming also Interactive Brokers) offers this, but Webull doesn't allow opening a 0DTE options position after 3pm EST.
  7. Reasonably decent order executions and fills. I think TD Ameritrade isn't that bad and IB is probably also OK but I haven't tried it yet. By contrast, Webull has unbelievably scammy fills and executions at times. I've had it happen where using a market sell caused me to get filled around 0.10 below the bid on a penny stock that wasn't more than a few dollars, so the bad fill stole at least several percentage points of profit. I've also seen Webull withhold a market order from executing for upwards of ten seconds until the fill caused the trade to become a loss when it otherwise shouldn't have been. (This issue alone has been enough to make me determined to find an alternative to Webull. But the commission free options trading is hard to give up because it can make scalping super cheap 0DTEs in bulk so much more profitable.)

I don't know what the best solution would be for trying to fulfill all seven (or as close to all as possible) of these conditions in my day trading account.

If there's no other brokerage that offers withdrawal of unsettled funds, then I'd probably deal with the lack of 4am-7am trading with TD Ameritrade as a necessary evil. That would then leave the question of whether it would not introduce too much execution lag to try to connect the TD Ameritrade account to a different trading desktop program for executions (I'd keep it as an overlay pinned on top of TOS which I'd still use for charting because all of my custom indicators use Thinkscript). So:

Q1. Is there a better alternative than TD Ameritrade for a broker that allows withdrawal of unsettled funds?
Q2. Is there a lag created by using a different program than TOS for the execution of trades with an Ameritrade account? (And would this lag also double if I had a high ping e.g. while trading on an overseas vacation, like if the time for the data to travel was 1400ms because I was in Asia, would that become about 2800ms? I don't think so, because logically I think that the long-distance delay would only be from my local machine to the recipient of the order, but any additional lag between the recipient of the order -- if that was the Ninjatrader server for instance -- and the brokerage it was relayed to, would not be long-distance; furthermore I don't know if the software such as Ninjatrader would just be configured to send the order directly to the brokerage, without acting as a middleman in terms of the online data transfer).
Q3. If I want to use TOS for charting + any brokerage that offers the best combination of the above features (with withdrawal of unsettled funds being virtually mandatory) + any trading program that offers for executions as many of the above features as possible (i.e. a fantastic trade ladder widget, and buy/sell buttons with position sized based on % of net liquid), what would you suggest? Would I need to go with TD Ameritrade as the brokerage plus something like Ninjatrader for the executions?

I'm really at a loss for how to best solve this brokerage + trading software dilemma, and I think that the trial and error involved would include a lot of wasted time and money if it's possible on the other hand to learn from what this community has already figured out as the best compromise. So I'd be very grateful for your input about this!
 

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no clue how do u make money

My current strategy mostly involves options trading so it's hard to give up the commission free options trades. But one drawback of Webull is they don't allow opening 0dte positions after 3pm. I opened an Interactive Brokers account and got approved for margin but they rejected the application for permission to trade options which is just ridiculous. So the IB account doesn’t have much use for me. I think that the options permission request was automatically rejected because I am self-employed as a trader (in combination with having a net worth that is sub-seven figures?). The criteria for approval aren't transparent.
 
I've been using TOS for years but only recently started day trading options. This has quickly racked up commissions and has me looking for alternatives. First obvious choice was Tastyworks, which I have not tried yet, but now Webull is on my radar too. First time poking around the Webull interface was today. One thing I immediately noticed TOS has but Webull does not appear to have (not sure about Tastyworks yet) is the ability to set up a stop loss that will sell at MARK which, in the case of options, is the mid price between bid and ask. MARK is superior to MARKET, at least with options. Selling at MARKET you can get fleeced. Unfortunately, Active Trader in TOS allows MARK for stop orders, but not for buy orders. That kinda blows. Your warnings about bad fills at Webull is concerning. That could essentially eliminate the advantage of having no commissions if the bad fills or often enough and large enough. Another thing Webull does not have is the tick timeframe. TOS has the tick timeframe in Charts, but unfortunately there is no tick timeframe in the Strategy Wizard, so you cannot key a strategy based on ticks. Anyone feel free correct me if I am wrong.
 
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I've been using TOS for years but only recently started day trading options. This has quickly racked up commissions and has me looking for alternatives. First obvious choice was Tastyworks, which I have not tried yet, but now Webull is on my radar too. First time poking around the Webull interface was today. One thing I immediately noticed TOS has but Webull does not appear to have (not sure about Tastyworks yet) is the ability to set up a stop loss that will sell at MARK which, in the case of options, is the mid price between bid and ask. MARK is superior to MARKET, at least with options. Selling at MARKET you can get fleeced. Unfortunately, Active Trader in TOS allows MARK for stop orders, but not for buy orders. That kinda blows. Your warnings about bad fills at Webull is concerning. That could essentially eliminate the advantage of having no commissions if the bad fills or often enough and large enough. Another thing Webull does not have is the tick timeframe. TOS has the tick timeframe in Charts, but unfortunately there is no tick timeframe in the Strategy Wizard, so you cannot key a strategy based on ticks. Anyone feel free correct me if I am wrong.

I'm not sure if Webull has tick charts because I only use it for execution and still use TOS for all my charting. The fills issue with Webull can only be solved in my experience by buying into the ask. If you're trading highly liquid options such as SPY options then it's not that bad because there's no spread. But it does mean you'd better have a very solid edge if you're scalping out of the money 0dtes, e.g. buying into the ask at 0.11 with the bid at 0.10 is of course an immediate ~10% loss if you need to exit into the bid.
 

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