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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Don't believe your broker or platform blindly


PROBLEM: your platform is not perfect nor accurate. I don't know who you use but I can guarantee you that not all the information that you see is accurate and/or correct.

DON'T rely on your broker/platform for accurate info!
We always tell you to have multiple sources of information. Yesterday I saw $TM (Toyota Motors ADR) in the heat map of the Russell 2000. My first thought was since when is Toyota a small cap? Then there was the size of the box; it took about a quarter of the grid. So, I tweeted the question out on stocktwits and twitter but got no response. Then I emailed ThinkOrSwim (pretty impressive platform and a good size broker) with the question and got this response: "Thanks for your patience. It appears that this symbol was inadvertently added to the Russell 2000 watchlist, therefore it was showing in Heatmap; it has since been removed and is no longer showing. If you continue to see it, please restart the trading platform."

LESSON: Make sure to check more than one source. If something seems off a bit or too good to be true (in quotes, news, dates, earnings) CHECK IT and CHECK IT AGAIN! In this case it wasn't so crucial since I didn't have a trade setup based on the information but I was looking for market direction to see if I should close other positions.