Over the last few years TS has lowered their commissions to remain competitive with other brokers. Every time they lower their commissions you would assume that their existing customer base would receive the benefits of the price reduction, but you have to specifically request the change. I've called them on it several times and they make excuses to the effect that they can't change customer's accounts unless asked - possibly true, but a bit too convenient for my liking.
That $20 book fee is an outrage isn't it? Does it cost them anything like that to deliver the data? Yeah.
Out of ignorance, is $20 ECN book fee the same as exchange fee (like NYSE/NASDAQ/CME)? If not, it is outrageous. tc
If you trade 25 round turns a day....the data is free. Also they lower the trade commissions depending on your use. They are the same price as the cheapest places. The data fees are expensive IMHO, but I guess they have to make money somewhere. IB gives all data for next to nothing, but they do not offer software either. If you trade equities there also is a different rate for frequent traders. I like them because I use automatic programs. Though backtesting can produce different results than forward testing on some of the charts. I hope they fix that soon. It is a big pain in the ass. I thought I had a killer system only to have it fall apart because of that. UGH. There are billing mistakes sometimes, but they get corrected without asking the following day in my account.
The 20 is not an 'exchange fee'. There must be some cost to bring the isld/brut/arca fee in , but its probably trivial and pennies per acct. Any while TS is a sophisticated platform, it's not accurate to say that IB does not provide software. The TWS has many powers, including links to charting , and a beta realtime chart.
you are being quite gentle- sleazy is more like it. a letter to sec or a letter to ts that you will inform sec should do the job note sleazy in one area is likely tip of the iceberg
Dear Valued Clients, With respect to unintended and/or duplicated charges, we certainly apologize for any of these incidents. We strongly urge our clients to contact us immediately should these ever arise such that the situation can be immediately rectified. Regarding commission reductions, our firm policy has always been to apply these to all our clients automatically. Our most recent actions--lowering from 1.2 cents to 1 cent the commission on the first 500 shares for equities and lowering option commissions--clearly evidence this. The only exception to the aforesaid policy arises when a pricing change involves an increased committment(eg. platform fees, plan fees, trading volume requirements and so forth) from clients--in which case the clients obviously need to explicitly direct us to make the appropriate changes to their accounts. Our firm policy has always been to communicate commission/pricing changes to clients in a systemmatic, structured and time sensitive manner.
I wonder why they don't just add a "papertrade simulator" to their automated trading so that people can forward test a strategy? Paul
Are you aware of any plans to add a papertrade forward-testing feature in a coming release? Thanks, Paul