Most here could trade for free and still lose money, just becuase of the way markets work. I think it was best said by some one here. "Think in terms of pennys you will make pennys, think in terms of dollars you will make dollars." You want zero commission go try that zecco trade. Thing is A. there is no training, and B. the fills are most likely retail levels with slippage, and trading against your orderflow or routing it. I would wonder why a profitable trader would spend one iota of time with you if its not worth their while? Either on the commission side or in the potential profit. I can only imagine how frustrating it is to invest time and energy into a person and have them unintentionally do the exact opposite and blow out. Not because they are bad people, but they are just not wired right in the head yet, or never will be.
so if a person is in training they should take the high commissions until they are good enough to get better rates and switch firms? our place starts new people out at .009
You want the lowest rates possible if you're new because you'll be losing money both from commissions and trades and so the less you pay in commissions, the less time before your capital burns out and you can no longer stay in the game. There is only one acceptable reason for overpaying on commissions and that is getting training. The firm I'm with charges a penny per share for newbies, but that price is very fair because you get excellent training - successful traders go over your trades with you every day, share their winning strategies with you, and spend hours with you after the market is over scrolling through time and sales. Getting that kind of attention is well worth overpaying on commissions; it's only fair to expect someone who is very rich and thus has a high value on his time to want to be compensated for teaching you. But if you're not getting any training, you're just getting a big sharded piece of metal shoved up your ass. Go elsewhere.
normally they decrease the rate as you trade more shares. doesn't this sometimes force you into overtrading rather than making good trading decisions? do they usually "reward" good consistent traders with lower rates even if they don't trade size?