Done quite a bit of research recently on this topic. The choices seem limited. But I would like to know what the opinion of the posters on this board are concerning the best place for a large Retail Canadian Investor to open an account. I have looked at: 1) Questrade Unlimited shares for a total of $9.99 per trade. Not bad, since I plan on doing 5000-10000 shares per trade. No real timeframe to hold either. Could be seconds or days....depending on the situation. Problem is, they dont offer rebates for liquidity. In fact, they charge me 0.005 cents per share through ARCA, BRUT, etc. whether I remove liquidity or add liquidity. Only through INET do i not get dinged, except when I do 10,000 shares....in which, I do get dinged. Another problem is their $250.00 charge for Cybertrader Pro platform if under 50 trades per month. Not Good!! 2) Interactive Brokers Bundled: They charge a per share fee commission and apparently do not have any ECN charges....Its a reasonable 0.005 in and out for US Stocks and 0.01 in and out for Canadian Stocks They do not charge for Software but they do charge for NYSE Open Book and Nasdaq level II total $70.00 per month. Not good!! They also offer unbundled pricing. Commission charge for unbundled is 0.0035 per share. A bit high, considering potential ECN fees. Question is: If you go bundled with IB, do you get to route your order or are ALL orders SMART routed. 3) Ameritrade 29.99 Limit Order Broker Assisted. No software fees when opening an account of certain amoutn or more. No exchange fees when opening an account of certain amount or more. Problem is you have no direct access to the market. You either trade by the web, or you call the broker. Either way, its slower than Direct Access Platform of Quest or IB above. Anyone with suggestions of firms with better execution platforms or better pricing. Please let me know. Remember, I have the money myself, therefore, im looking for Retail, not Prop. Thanks.
Quote from Investorsources: 2) Interactive Brokers They do not charge for Software but they do charge for NYSE Open Book and Nasdaq level II total $70.00 per month. Not good!! Everyone is going to charge you for NYSE OB, one way or the other, since NYSE charges them $50 for it (used to have to pay them directly - thankfully that's over). You either pay it directly or through higher commissions, software fees, minimum commissions, etc. I'd rather pay for it (at cost) in one place, where I need it, than pay for it in buried charges in several places. IB charges $11 more than the $9 exchange fee for Naz L-II. Doesn't seem significant for a "large" investor. They also offer unbundled pricing. Commission charge for unbundled is 0.0035 per share. A bit high, considering potential ECN fees. That's only for <= 300K per month, which, again, doesn't seem like the right bracket for a "large investor". It's 0.0029 at just 500K per month (just 25 10K round-trips), 0.00245 at 1M. I think those are within about 0.0005 of the best deals out there. Perhaps someone else can correct me if they have a better deal for 1M/month (I doubt there's anything better under that volume level). Question is: If you go bundled with IB, do you get to route your order or are ALL orders SMART routed. You can always route where you want, regardless. If you use any of the APIs (Excel, java, C++, etc.), though, it's expensive to do so.
Couple of comments. First thing I would point out is that you don't necessarily need to go with the CyberTrader Pro Premium platform, their CyberTrader Pro Basic platform is only $25/month. I would also suggest checking out TradeFreedom as another alternative, their pricing isn't all that bad. Depends on your capital and trading style though, as it would appear that shorting US stocks is not as simple as at Questrade (I could be wrong about this), and also TradeFreedom has larger dollar size requirements to open up the more interesting types of accounts.