Hello again, my old friends.  I must start this post off with an apology.  I have not written in a long time about what we've been doing to improve the website and overall TradeKing experience.  The past couple months, we been drilling down on our code and overall infrastructure to improve our site performance and while we are proud of what has been done, it really is not too interesting to read about.  I think my job is exciting and it definitely keeps my brain working all the time, but I fear that if i got into the details of what I do, you would not be too interested.

So, I will make this as brief as possible.  We changed the way we request and report back client information which, in turn, improves site response times for clients.  We've now reduced page load times by 66%!  We are consistently ranked as the 3rd or 4th fastest brokerage site by Gomez Advisors (http://www.gomez.com/Performance_Strategies/benchmarking/benchmark_usbrokerage.html).  While we are happy with the improvement so far, we have many more initiatives to implement in the coming months that we feel will catapult us to number 1!  I figured the results were more interesting than the process.

In addition to the site performance improvements, we added a few new features to the site that we think you might enjoy:

- We now have Contingent Orders!  A Contingent order is a regular order that is sent to the market only after certain contingency criteria is met.  You decide the criteria when you place the order.  The criteria can be based on the price of either a Stock or Option.  When the price is met, your order will be released to the market.  From the Advanced Order drop down, you can place Contingent orders for Stock-Stock, Option-Option, Stock-Option and Option-Stock type trades.

- One-Triggers-Other orders have been improved.  We now allow Option-Stock and Stock-Option orders.  We also changed the screen format to simplify how these orders are placed.

- Now that tax season is upon us, please check out our Download Data section.  It is accessed from the Accounts Menu.  Here you can download your account data to Quicken, MS Money or Excel.  Another feature we have on the Holdings Screen is you can update your Cost Basis for your current Holdings. 

- As you may already know, the Penny Pilot program has been launched for specific securities.  This means, you can now place limit Option orders to the penny on the following underlying stocks:  WFMI, GE, MSFT, IWM, A, QQQQ, SMH, AMD, INTC, CAT, TXN, FLEX and SUNW.

- On the Summary Screen - we added your Account Profile Module.  Here you can make sure your account is up to date and check out what level of Options Trading your account is approved for.

That's it for now!  Thank you for reading.  I will continue to post updates in the future.  I promise!