With our access on Redi, we have the ability to "lock" a market on a regional exchange. We teach our traders how this system works, and in fact even get fills via the ITS system. We have our many ex-specialists for this added benefit.
I will try to answer several questions here, starting with the $10Mil question. We give out our balance sheets, as all firms are required to do, but in the interest of full disclosure here goes: See the next posts for those other questions that I seemed to have missed...I sometimes only link back to the last question and answer it...sorry about that. And let the "dodging questions" and "avoiding answering" and all nonsense die a natural death, please. I have been very forthright here, and have not seen much in that same vain from others in my position....here goes... You're making me work here: Article II, 2.5 - Capital Contributions: "As of the effective date of this agreement, each of the Members has those Capital Account balances set forth on the records of the Company." (Those "records" are our audited balance sheets showing the minimum of $10Mil...We have much more than that in our Class B accounts, but that is not important). More answers coming...
IB is fine, I have always said so. I could argue that many traders cannot always limit themselves to retail margin and want to expand their trading. All shares in excess of 2500 are free with us, and we give you the capital to trade those larger numbers. We rarely go to the Regionals directly, but it is good to know the rules that apply. We have saved many nickels and dimes in pricing by locking in prices from Regionals using Redi. We don't have to use ITS since we now have NX (but we pick and choose which orders go NX, since we don't get the price improvement we are used to).
We have many traders who have expressed their concern about the dilution of strategies by our sharing of methodologies. So far this has proven to not be a concern, actually the opposite has occurred...with "newbies" trading, who are excited about making small profits, the "experienced traders" seem to be doing better. For example: I have a few traders under my direct "tutelege" (sp?) and have them do the same opening stocks that I do. Many times they will make a nickel or a dime, while I may make much more (not that I am so smart, it's just that it gets easier to read the stocks after some experience). We shared our option strategies in the 70's and 80's (albeit with a fewer number), and our Futures strategies in the late 80's, and we have shared our experience for the last 10 years with our traders...and we seem to be doing better than ever. There are thousands of stocks to choose from, and since there are several stragegies, we find that some may be buying when others are selling...which works out well for everyone. My observations only....I don't know what Echo has experienced to date, but as they get a bit more time to track, I am sure they will share their results with you.
yanking pickles? you're kinda filthy... being objective, being clear, so others can respond in a reasonable fashion is an indication of deceny. so far, Don Bright (who needs no defending) had to answer your one paragraph of run-on half-thought and word phrases with over 6 replies. Someone else asked you to slow down. Wait until you're 6 months into trading and needing to do a historical analysis of your trading patterns, successes and losses, and then appreciate an accurate and timely PRINTED monthly statement, instead of having to compile all the component daily statements. Uh, oh, but this doesn't apply to you, because you resent the professional firms and prefer the highly reputable IB which provide customer account statements. Well, there are differences between Customer basis and Professional basis. Many of us, have used these forums to express our delights and frustrations with a number of the firms. Some of the more responsive firms (GeneW, DonBright, IB and others) have paid attention and responded. Those who haven't, have lost their customer base. So you see, we use these forums in polite language befitting our stations in life, and let's face it, all of us have seen trades that amount to more than most people's yearly salary. That should count for something in our polite conversations. We can all return to the junk yard barking hound stage, but I believe most of us prefer not to.
If you are looking to take your trading data and analyze it, at my old firm they used a product called "Trader Profile" (traderprofile.com?) that took all my account historical data at SLK and did over 25 different studies to optimize my trading and determine my weaknesses (too many to list here). Bright could probably combine all its traders and do it on firm wide numbers.
excellent comment... I appreciate it when the comments are constructive, informative and alllows others to benefit from their experience.... TraderProfile was available to all SLK customers/client brokerage firms. I was not able to get the SLK feed to tie into source of their reports, hence manual entry or manually kept personal records. Seems the staff at Onsite were way too cheap to even pay for the SLK interface programs. They sure did charge some of the highest ticket costs in the industry, and played cheap on even printer paper. One day, the office idiot suggested that there should not be anymore 8 1/2" x 11" stock be placed into the HP because too many traders (count them 3) were using it for aftermarket printouts. Cheap and this idiot equaled an empty office.....