I am regretfully opening an account with Schwab International, after being a happy IB customer for 10+ years. I have recently started trading lots of securities sub 1$ per unit and am finding that IB is costing me a fortune in relative commission. Will I regret my move? Expected savings: $2000-$5000 per month.
Regret a move thats going to save you over $25,000-$50,000 a year?????????????? Why would you even think that as regret? Geeez.
I'm a KISS guy. Both in my former business activities and trading. Early on, I wanted to possibly be "all things" to potential customers... you know, "widen my net of possibilities"... so that every service/product I could supply a client was a potential source of income. Come to find out, supporting such notion consumes too much logistically. Each time I "narrowed the focus of my business", I made more money. (I eventually settled on a mutual fund timing service and excluded all else.) I understand IB "has everything"... but is that what a trader really needs? Can the trader actually "follow everything" to his advantage"? I suggest not. To do a really good job, one needs more limited but more intense focus... IMV.
I also moved most of my money from IBKR to both Schwab and Fidelity. I still leave a tiny amount at IBKR for my futures strategies and very slow moving stock strategies (like once a month trading).
I don't think you should be concerned about that. If as you perceive, you're talking about "tics" on execution if at all. Not much you can really do about that and even if so, small potatoes. You need to get the "swing or bigger" play correct to be a success. If someone scrapes a few pennies off of your execution, not really much you can do about it... and certainly should not have a significant impact on your overall results. It's easy to become "penny wise but pound foolish" for traders.
IB is still growing Interactive Brokers Group Reports Brokerage Metrics and Other Financial Information for May 2020, includes Reg.-NMS Execution Statistics GREENWICH, CT, June 1, 2020 — Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: IBKR) an automated global electronic broker, today reported its Electronic Brokerage monthly performance metrics for May. Brokerage highlights for the month included: • 1,645 thousand Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs)1, 84% higher than prior year and 4% lower than prior month. • Ending client equity of $190.6 billion, 32% higher than prior year and 6% higher than prior month. • Ending client margin loan balances of $23.3 billion, 10% lower than prior year and 13% higher than prior month. • Ending client credit balances of $70.0 billion, including $3.0 billion in insured bank deposit sweeps2, 32% higher than prior year and 1% higher than prior month. • 839 thousand client accounts, 31% higher than prior year and 4% higher than prior month. • 448 annualized average cleared DARTs1 per client account. • Average commission per cleared Commissionable Order3 of $2.83 including exchange, clearing and regulatory fees. Key products: Futures include options on futures. We estimate exchange, clearing and regulatory fees to be 57% of the futures commissions. Other financial information for Interactive Brokers Group: • GLOBAL4: The value of the GLOBAL, reported in U.S. dollars, increased by 0.22% in May. Year to date, the value of the GLOBAL decreased 0.69%. In the interest of transparency, we quantify our IBKR PRO clients’ all-in cost of trade execution below. May 2020 Stocks Equity Options Futures Average Commission per Cleared Commissionable Order $1.98 $4.42 $4.08 Average Order Size 1,023 shares 7.2 contracts 2.8 contracts • In May, IBKR PRO clients’ total cost of executing and clearing U.S. Reg.-NMS stocks through IB was about 2.1 56 basis points of trade money , as measured against a daily VWAP benchmark (1.4 basis points net cost for the
Schwab allows you to place limit bids (at the current bid) and offers (at the current offer) on ECNs (even invisible), so they don't seem to be selling all their orders.