I have been with TDAmeriTrade for almost a year but I am very disappointed that things are not working as well as my Fidelity account. The thing that made me decided not to trade with them anymore was I found out they did not recalculate my trailing stop order when my ETF distributed dividends. Not only did they not recalculate the order like Fidelity did, they canceled my order without notifying me. No phone calls, no emails to my registered email address, no email to my TDAmeriTrade account to let me know my order was canceled! I have an ETF ADRE in TDAmeriTrade’s account. I set a trailing stop order on September 24th, 2009 in case there is a big drop in the market. On October 28th the market did have a big drop and I was surprised to find the order was canceled only four days after I had set it and my ETF was still in my account and the order was not executed. I contacted their manager and he said it is industry standard to cancel the order when dividends distribution was recorded. In doing so they are protecting their customers’ assets. And it is not their responsibility to notify the customers that the order has been canceled and it is customers’ responsibility to check their accounts to find the information and re-set the order. The problem with his story is that I have another ETF QQQQ with Fidelity. That ETF distributed dividends on the same day, October 30, so I assumed they have the same ex-dividend day. I also had a trailing stop order on the ETF. I did not have any information about whether this ETF was going to distribute dividends or not, like I did not have any information about ADRE. But I did not need to know because when I saw the actual dividends distributed in my account on October 30, Fidelity had already recalculated the trailing stop order for me. My trailing stop order was still intact when I checked on that big drop day. (QQQQ did not drop as much so the order was not executed that day). I thought the whole purpose of trailing stop orders is to protect investors while they are not watching. If I monitor my investments everyday and every minute, I don’t need to set the trailing stop order. It is their responsibility to recalculate my order like Fidelity did. Barring that, they should have at least notified me that my order was cancelled so I know I need to re-set it. Instead, they blamed me for not watching my ETF closely to know that my order had been cancelled by them. I don’t watch my investments everyday and I will never be able to do that so I had no choice but to move my business to Fidelity.

Reviewed by Evelyn Wang | November. 24, 2009