Selecting a trading platform

Well this is no easy task. Do you want to pay for a 'front-end' or do you want a free one? Well if you want free you will get what you pay for. Slow trades, bad fills and unrelaible service. Not alwasy because of the broker but becasuse you are using the internet to trade. If you are a buy and hold kind then this is fine but if you are power trading and speed counts then you should pay up for a better system. After internet connectivty is leased line. This is a dedicated line from your PC/server to the broker. No its not cheap but you will eliminate some of your execution risk and get better fills. Lets suppose your are writing a simple covered call (buy stock sell call) you have to click two seperate orders and maybe you will get the wrong strike price in a frenzy to get filled. Or maybe the second order is subject to a loag spike on the interent. 1 order gets filled and the other doesn't. There are a multitude of scenarios but all web based systems are generally the same. They just dress them up with bells and whistles. Power platforms are just that and cost. My website www.asia-etrading.com talks about electronic trading and these very issues. Hope this was helpful.