TD Ameritrade: Mobile Trader Reviews

by Mobiletraderreviewer

On the iPhone X, TDAmeritrade (even after most recent updates) spontaneously shuts down and will indeed do this when you are placing trades, necessitating restarts at crucial moments of trading. What I’m referring to is not infrequent - it occurs more often that once daily, is easy to replicate and should be easy to fix. To me, by the date of this review (3/6/18), it’s an inexcusable bug. Ameritrade does not seem to be prioritizing the mobile trader apps. Think or swim is their baby (and you cannot hear enough promotion of think or swim from the Ameritrade account and services reps - they are constantly prompted to ask you about whether you’re using think or swim. I can’t help but believe that singular focus is coming with a real cost to those of us who use the mobile app. It’s a ridiculous price to pay but perhaps an unavoidable result of using a discount brokerage (I’m not sure).

by Smokin Op's

Good morning I am a trader who is blind. I am fairly good at making use of the iPhone and also screen reading technology. More than three weeks ago I spoke with an IT person about problems accessing their website via the mobile app Trader for use with the iPhone. As of today no changes have been made. The website is almost completely in accessible.
As for the website itself and using screen reader technology, it is not fully accessible either again I have spoken with folks at TD Ameritrade to no avail. They say that changes are coming next month, but I doubt if they will employ any changes with regard to those of us who are blind. If you are blind and wanting to make use of this software either on their mobile app or their web app location, good luck. Call them and make some noise as I have. Maybe if enough of us speak up loudly they will even Julie make some changes.

by Jhw56

Easy to use, add and modify studies, fast order generation.
Charting and indicators need attention!!
I would like the TTM_Squeeze indicator to be fixed. This is a key indicator for many of my trades and the alert has never worked on this platform. Others have mentioned this flaw yet no action to fix this issue. Now another indicator the rsi_shared_Laguerre also does not work. Another major issue is that study groups cannot be copied from one time frame to another, making it necessary to do a lot of work entering them over and over again. This is a real pain that others mention, yet not fix. If TD Ameritrade does not address the charting issues with indicators and styles, I may have to switch to TradeView which has better charting for mobile use. I am not able to be at my desktop to use the full version of TOS due to work, so the mobile version needs to step it up a notch or be left out.
**Update**
Access issue while traveling wouldn’t resolve with logging out or shutting phone off. Support couldn’t fix with reloading app as only fix. Again wiping out all my saved study sets! Why can’t these be saved on the cloud?
Getting a 1 star for this recurring problem this app refuses to resolve.

by Jar584

While traveling abroad for a month, my PC crashed. I was forced to use my iPhone to do the trading. It’s a horrible experiences to use TDAmeritrade in a mobile device like IPhone.

When you want to increase your Microsoft position because of attractive low price for example, 95% chance you will end up selling it to a loss (doing the opposite). The culprit, the default setup & nothing can be done to disable it. While busy filling TDAmeritrade buy fields, the DEFAULT SETUP assumes that you’re Selling it instead of Buying.

When you’re in the go using an IPhone, selling your position is TIME CONSUMING and losing a best price you wanted. To sell your position at MARKET price, you have to cycle to 8 types of selling option before you reach the Market price. What a pain & nothing you can do to disable or customize it.

by Lacunosum

The latest version (182) has made the charts much more difficult to use. When you switch between names in a watchlist the chart is scrolled to the left so that the most recent data is off the right edge of the screen. This means every time you switch names you have to wait for the chart to fully load and then scroll all the way to the right. How much you need to scroll depends on the timeframe of the chart. Also, to switch between chart types now you tap to bring up a menu on the side and then tap again on the candlestick icon to bring up the chart type menu. This is an extra tap in the UI that used to be a single tap, made worse by the fact that the side menu is on the left side of the screen, as far as possible from your actual thumb, which makes it very awkward to use. I wish I could revert to the previous version, because I spend most of my time in TDAmeritrade flipping through charts in watchlists and switching chart types, and this is all worse now.

by Mom_of_3.

Maybe it’s because I’m a novice. I think that while making a trade the candle chart needs to be available. Some stocks move so quickly that the TDAmeritrade interface is too slow and cumbersome. I looked at the advanced order system, but unless I have crystal ball to predict the future I can only put estimates in there. Still requires modification at times and by the time the modification is completed the opportunity is gone. Simple trades with the chart available is needed. A simple trades are not saved so you have to continually re enter information. Once it is entered again the opportunity is gone. So simple trades that can be saved quickly and candle charts available while entering order info.

by Setstir

I look at my page, and am overwhelmed. I had a Scottrade account specifically because it was a better page. An “account manager” from TD called me to see if I was happy. Good for them (no sarcasm). Of course, I knew that it was to stimulate trading on my end. I told her that I would trade much more if the page was much simpler and more intuitive. It is difficult for me to believe that this site was ever actually tested on a focus group. If it was, maybe I’m wrong. At best, however, the focus group would have had to have been made up of highly motivated and extremely active traders where somehow THEIR specific proclivities, i.e., ludicrous color integration (purple, blue with red and green) and an unorganized mess of columns and rectangles constituted a stimulation of trading. For me, it’s an unpleasant color wheel spun into a mess. Hire a stylist! Give your customers options on what kind of start page. ASK us what WE want. Honestly, you’re pretty close to losing me to Fidelity, as it is. BUT, I’m a loyal guy, and am hoping that I might get listened to, this time. Cheers!

by VIP9232

This is a good trading app but it can be improved a lot. There are some quirks that I don’t get it. Many times it cancels the order right after it is placed and doesn’t provide any reason for it. It would be nice to have a watch list like CNBC has and be allowed to trade directly from it while tracking them. Also, the trading commission is not included in the trade price, it should be to provide better transparency to customers. It would be nice if they have filter in the order history based on their status. For example if I want to see only filled orders I should not need to scroll, search and find the filled or canceled or expired order. One more filter could be based on the stock itself that can give the trading history of the stock may be up to a year.

Overall I am satisfied with it.

Peace.

by CW Church

This is a great platform, especially for young people just learning how to make investments like me. This is a Fantastic experience for people of all ages. I would recommend if you are just starting to learn about investments that you find someone who may help you out at first. This person for me is my brother. He helped me think through what I was doing, analyze the charts, and he helped me learn the vocabulary. One more thing I recommend is the learning videos on TDAmeritrade . One thing I learned through that is that you want to have a little bit of everything. What this means is you want not just to buy shares from one company. You want to invest in company’s but also bonds, and mutual funds to diversify your portfolio. Overall this is just a great app to earn some money, learn, and have a good time.

by Danimalpanda

Many traders use two apps for multiple accounts to have different themes for easily distinguishing trades and clarity.

If TDAmeritrade is removed from TDAmeritrade Store, and only a single thinkorswim app remains, then many traders would be forced to either buy another device, or open another account with a different brokerage. The latter is much more practical means of ensuring trades don’t overlap across accounts. The former means loss of business for TD and Chuck. Presumably this is attributed to the Charles Schwab acquisition, along with the loss of chat and shadowtrader. What else will be lost? This has the core traders looking elsewhere. Bare bones traders have Robin Hood to go to, if you scrape these features clean, they will just go to Hood instead.

by Brendan McCann

Needs iPhone X support.

From my prior review, likely still applicable: There is currently no way to switch accounts from Paper Money to Live Trading without signing all the way out and then having to sign back in with my password, very cumbersome. Support confirmed this is a bug that will "hopefully" be fixed. Fix this and you get 4 stars from me. Only other glitch I have found is that alerts show up in two places. Keep them out of the Message Center and in the Alerts tab where they belong. And please soften the sounds a little bit or give an option to turn off some of them. Thanks!

by ActiveBanker

TDAmeritrade is becoming one of my most used as I trade more often. I like the way the chart shows up in details and is easily customizable. I pair TDAmeritrade with the other Ameritrade app because I like the white background on it for research and reports. Trader app is much more reliable for trading though. The charts are user friendly as you rotate the phone as well. I like that the company has platforms for different types of investors.

ThinkorSwim is the most advanced trading platform I've seen and I love using it! When in doubt, right click! The support is amazing in times of need, too!

by Pelle58

It was a 5 previously. It’s a 5 when it works. With every update it fails to work properly. Even when phone is completely turned off and restarted. Will now wait for the next update fix. Previous update told me my login didn’t even exist and couldn’t connect to system. This new update just turns off phone. Once they fixed glitch in last update it worked like a charm. By the way the previous version worked yesterday. TDAmeritrade is costing me money today. Why can’t they get it right first time around with these updates ?

by Local Walnut

I have used Scottrade, Tradeking, Dough, Options House, Interactive Brokers and TD mobile trader.

I cannot believe how many features are at least somewhat available on the mobile app. Of course it doesn't replace the ThinkorSwim desktop software but a solid implementation for sure.

I like column customization flexibility, risk profile tool, and easy interface for building spreads as well as alerts feature on TDAmeritrade. Charting functions including the ability to incorporate custom studies is so cool. Calendar for earnings, economic events and dividends is also better than competitors I have tried.

They recently tried implementing the analyze tab functionality too. Hats off for trying but it just might not be possible in a small screen format.

They should consider allowing landscape option for viewing options chains without constantly sliding around.

Also I would like them to implement 2 factor security like IB has.

by Sep23

Great app. So much functionality for an app. Main issue is that TDAmeritrade continues to reinitialize itself meaning every other time TDAmeritrade is launched, even if you don’t actively shut it down, it will launch as if it was just freshly installed. So any customizations you saved like indicators or column setups are gone and you have to do it all over again. This was a problem with the prior versions but now even worse. If they can get this fixed then definitely 5 stars. Anyone else having similar issues? Please fix.