Lightspeed is a joke: trade safer elsewhere
Lightspeed is a joke. They want you to lose money. The simple reason for this is that market makers and exchanges pay them more than the customers that trade on their software. Here are two examples: your P&L doesn’t have the % change of your positions, this function is critical as most humans use this as a measure of how their position is doing instead of doing mental math dozens of times every trade. Second example is the most questionable. You have a list of positions, imagine they are all profitable-you can only see the value, or in other words net liquidity for the positions you are hardly profitable in, while the ones you are massively profitable in, you can’t see the value. This inconsistency confuses people and they know this. They also send reports on confirmations later, an inconsistency that confuses people regarding the value of their position. To make options even more difficult to trade, you have to hand click every thing you want to execute. On another brokerage platform you’ll click some 3-5 times, where on Lightspeed you’ll click some 8-10 times. Obviously it’s to make it harder for you. I also had an experience once where I closed all my trades at market without a confirmation when I was losing money, no problem. Then when I did it when I was in the green, I got confirmation windows, and an error and had to go back and click them individually. Odd timing.
More on what Lightspeed does and its philosophy:
1. They don’t believe they are the caddie when you are golfing. They believe that they are setting up the golf course and you play by their rules specifically, and get used to it whether you’re frustrated with the difficulties of using their platform are not. Most brokerages understand, they’re simply providing the tools to trade, not manipulating the experience.
Note my comment above that they don’t reveal the net liquidity aka value of the position for all of your trades.
Additionally, the % change function is hidden and difficult to find.
All of their tabs are hard to interpret in straight forward English which is a crucial step in execution on their sub language platform.
2. They don’t believe in accurate timing and distribution of statements or financial statements, and believe the traders’ experience is a part of their own, and they display this perspective of theirs by placing the burden on the trader to figure out their distribution times.
Example 1 - they email you at 5 am EST saying that your trading reports are available. When you click the link, you find no trading reports nor confirmations until 8 am EST daily.
Example 2 - you go flat on all of your trades and then request a check to withdraw funds. Then you get an automated email, seemingly automated perhaps, of a margin call on your account after going through the necessary steps and approvals to request a check be sent to you.
Lightspeed needs to learn, just because Wedbush has built a customer base in managing assets and facilitating trades, it is the caddie, it is not the house. People should not come to “play their game” but should be expected to be provided a service with respect for the individual paying for their service. Their manipulations at higher cost than quality larger brokerages is a shame, and a hallmark of the deceptive practices that financial institutions attempt to extract money from customers and hide pertinent information, or make it inconvenient to access so that are disadvantaged compared to the exchanges they serve.
Bottom line: making it difficult to see positions and their value in the account, marking “.00” or just being plain inaccurate, sending false messages as to the timing reports of trades are available, and sending margin calls after withdrawals are requested is unethical in the practice of electronic brokerage. People deserve to be aware of at all times their position, the actual time their statements are sent and their true rights as to the liquidity required to trade or to their right to withdraw funds at any time.
