Selecting a broker - Recommendations?

[heech]

Hi all,

I'm new to Ninja Trader. I've used Wealth Lab Pro extensively, and TradeStation "some" in the past. I'm looking forward to getting started.

I'm also in the market for a new broker... and frankly, my head is getting turned around as to the best options. I figure Ninja Trader team/users would be best qualified to speak to the issue.

- I trade options/equities, no futures.
- commission level not a major issue; I trade relatively large sums.
- I want very reliable execution, and ideally built-in streaming quotes so I don't need another data vendor.
- I need portfolio margin.
- I need a broker that calculates intraday buying power real-time, and using time/tick info. (This should be a given for daytrading firms... but I've found some that don't do it reliably.)
- I will be coding my strategy entirely in NT.

Any suggestions out there?

I've looked at IB and TradeStation. But I've also seen various discussion threads that slam both the execution and reliability of both. Very disturbing. I'm actually tempted by TDAmeritrade/Izone, but I'm not sure that they handle margin intelligently for a pattern day trader.

Thanks in advance!

[heech]

Just to partly answer my own question here... TDAmeritrade is looking better and better. Despite the reputation as a discount broker, it looks to me like they've added some very nice tools. QuoteTracker looks great as a manual interface, while I'll still use NT for automated trading.

My fears about margin (which I had read online in a year-old blog entry) are probably wrong, as their margin rules (so far) seem pretty reasonable.

I'm not sure their execution is really up to snuff compared to IB, if the statistics are to be believed. But I'm more focused on reliability/stability than improvements of a few basis points. I'd really like feedback from anyone else with an opinion on this.