Lightspeed Financial Services Group Reviews 12

I have been using Lightspeed for 8 months now. Lightning fast execution, exceptional Level II data, customer service has been great. There are times when brokers restrict symbols from trading and I have even seen market data outages. Not with lightspeed. If I lose a connection, it is due to a power or internet outage. There have been a few bugs which can be expected with technology. They stay on top of it. Rob has been very responsive and helpful with answering all of my questions. If you want quick entries and exits, Lightspeed will deliver.

I've been using Lightspeed and Lightspeed Trader Pro software for day trading, M-F, for three months now and, frankly, they're just BARELY good enough for me to reluctantly remain with them, for now. I'm certainly NOT happy with them overall.

The good: Execution is fast and there is lots of room for custom configuration of your trading layout and hotkeys.

The bad: Their overall knowledge, service and systems are quite poor and buggy. I have had MANY poor experiences with them in a short time. Examples:

- When you change your account password (as required every few months) on the web site, you'll often find that you then cannot log into your trading software with no good error message. The web site allows some special password characters that their trading app does NOT allow. They apparently cannot be bothered to document nor FIX this bug.

- I have solved problems myself (out of necessity) and had their support admit to me that they were unaware of features in their own software.

- Numerous times, my buying power in my cash account did not update in time for next day trading, so I had to email their customer service so that they could manually "fix" the problem.

- Their "cashiering" services are straight out of 1990. If you schedule, then cancel an ACH transfer, the cancelled transaction will still count against your 90 day transfer limit, requiring you to waste time asking for a manual "override."

- Generally, for many cashiering requests, they require you to fill out a piece of paper, scan it, then email it; not much is done online like more modern brokerages (pretty much everywhere else).

- They have REALLY poor design of web services such as changing password and transferring funds, with very long, awkward pauses of 10+ seconds where you have NO idea visually IF anything is even happening. I've had it time out many times too.

- Of course, you're paying significant commissions and fees for this poor service; commissions and fees you could avoid completely at a wide variety of discount brokerages.

The bottom line, for me, for now, is that I like their trading layout and customizations (hotkeys in particular) and their execution is fast so, for now, I'm sticking with them, but only until I feel like dealing with the hassle to find something better. I absolutely do NOT trust them to competently do their jobs.

Overall a good pos system for a pub even if it is a bit over complicated. The worst thing is their lack of integration to dojo which was working fine but has now been disconnected even though their competitors still integrate with them. Dojo is still one of the best payment platforms and pay your business at about 0800hrs every day of the year. Lightspeed and many others cannot match this.

They charge fees for everything. Very high locate and overnight borrow fees. Not a good platform if you short a lot of stocks.

The platform is not usefull for trading, there is no P/L data no urealized gain,charting is very poor and above all there is zero customer service, if you run into any issue no one reply to you even for weeks. It is not a safe platform ; high fee comperade to the industry standard makes it one of the worst online broker out there.

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.

I have been scammed by people using Telegraph group and using this name thats very disappointing 😔 if its not you guys you really need to take action before they tarnish your name

Great and absolutely excellent platform for day trading. Easy to use and very understandable. Trading is quick, I would say light speed fast. What more can I ask for?
Their customer support is fast and helpful. As a beginner trader I need some advice on, and was very, very surprised how fast I got support from the manager.
Yes, there are cheaper brokers but I'm very pleased with the service received.

Lightspeed is an excellent platform for professional/active traders. Trading directly through Lightspeed via Sterling is a huge advantage for execution speed and clearly visualizing the market with a Level II. Executions, while not free, are usually done at the best price available, including between the advertised bid/offer spread. Same for executing options. I’ve been on the platform 7-8 years and would highly recommend for active traders.

I have been using the Lightpspeed Trader platform for active day-trading stocks and equity options for over 4 years. Order placements and fills are very fast. The platform is highly reliable, feature-rich, and allows you to speed up custom order placements/modifications with hot keys and hot buttons which I use often.

Over the decades I have used many different direct-access platforms. Some of those platforms are cumbersome to use. To send a new order, or to modify an open order, may take 30 seconds to even a minute. In today’s rapidly moving intraday markets, every extra second you spend placing/modifying orders can result in diminishing profits. Lightspeed Trader has always been a top contender in order execution speed, and ease of order modifications. You want to modify an existing open order and adjust the limit price upward/downward by a few cents, by a few dollars? You can select some built-in macros and invoke them with custom-defined hot buttons. There with the click of the mouse button, you can adjust the limit price of your order rapidly - multiple times in a second. That is very powerful. Some other sophisticated platforms can do that, but would charge hundreds of dollars a month just to use the software. With Lightspeed Trader, operation costs are very low, and commission rates are very reasonable.

I highly recommend this platform if you are active day-trading today’s fast markets.

And one more thing: my account manager is fantastic!

I truly love the quality of service and the reliability with which the service is provided. My account manager is truly available whenever I reach out and ask for his assistance. I cannot even think of a better option.

Lightspeed is the best,ever since i started using this platform i feel very safe.i was scammed before on a particular exchange,i made an investment and after multiple winnings,i was locked out of my account with a total sum of $94,392 ,i couldnt get the account back ,how OWENBARRETH on GMX got my money back is still a mystery till date.ever since then i have been trading with lightspeed