TradeKing Uses Delayed Quote?

I have a TradeKing account, but I didn’t use it as often as I did with Scottrade or Zecco and I didn’t really pay attention on how the stock quote is given in TradeKing. I usually check the quote before placing an order and I never noticed anything until yesterday when I was buying shares of AIG from TradeKing.

After I clicked the “Get Quote” button from the menu bar, a small area with the quote showed up at the bottom of the screen and on the right corner, there’s the “20 Min Delayed.”

I only saw this because I also had Google quote of AIG opened and happened to notice the price difference between the two. At that time, Google quote, which shows real-time quote, had a price around $2.08. Then I went to my Scottrade account and that also showed quote without delay.

Why is TradeKing doing this? When I previewed my order, the quote in the order was real-time. What’s the reason of showing two different quotes? It’s only confusing, nothing else.

Update: Mike from TradeKing has pointed out in the his comment that the real-time quote feature has to be enabled from the account (Service -> Settings ->Tradking & Real-Time Quotes).

Anyway, the setup didn’t take long. However, I still think this, real-time quote, should be set as default. Who’s interested in a 20-minute delayed quote in a brokerage account anyway?

Read my TradeKing review to learn more about the discount broker.