For futures traders, I have noticed that most brokerage firms using RT and trading futures are higher than some online futures firms out there. For that reason, many traders do get RT directly from Townsend and use a Futures broker for trading. And currently Dow Futures are not tradeable through RealTick, so this can be a determining factor for traders if that is what they want. Townsend will soon offer Dow Futures trading and I'm positive that you will see cheaper Futures rates in the future through several firms that use RealTick. The one main advantage with trading futures through RealTick, is the reliability of the data and the integration of trading in our quote screens. It really helps to have your order entry application coupled with your quote application, it saves time when making trades and therefore equates to better fills.
Couldn't agree more on the reliablitity! That's why I've have stay with your charting service thru the unstable times. It's definitely come a long ways in the last few years. I was one of the beta tester for futures trading inside the RT platform and I love it. lightning fast fills that's for sure. Just need for some broker to get a little more competitive on price and as for the Dow mini's I can wait until you have them. Actually I have been trading Dow's thru another broker waiting for your connectivity to be done. I'm sure my broker won't be happy if he follows this thread. Thanks Greg. Bsulli
I just reviewed this thread and while I usually post without reference to the fact that I run things at FMB I will explain to you where we with respect to realtick. FMB is currently set up to only do pro/prop trading (we have a few traders that we back--most people trade their own money). We also have access to some futures markets, but not over realtick and it is not something we are really promoting. We get realtick through arca as our traders are members of the pacific/arca exchange. For a while (maybe about a year) arca was giving us realtick for free. We also have isi and another proprietary order entry platform. It was a great setup for a while and as a group we put up about half our trades or more on arca. However, in June or July arca started charging us for the use realtick. Although they dropped our commission rate, at this time I am not to thrilled about being charged for the platform (I have not passed the realtick charge through to my traders) but before I accept anymore traders I will have to do a volume analysis. By the way I have a guy changing the website but before we change it I am waiting on a few things --- like perhaps the use of another platform that we are reviewing.