I've heard stories about online trading where the broker was effectively a market maker and the online software system refused to allow a trader to sell any shares at the highest bid price.
Similarly bids well below the last trade were not allowed to be placed. Not good at all if you want to place a really low bid in hope, not really expecting to be filled, on a potential market selling panic day.
I've also used E Trade Pro for a number of years and on the whole it has been a pretty good online broking service.
On my understanding of this issue E Trade Pro was still live streaming and buy and sell orders were able to be placed via the E Trade website.
