A few thoughts: IB has been much more reliable in the past year. IMO it's not the reliability of the network that is the issue. Rather it is the customer service issues that arise when an outage does occur. Knowing that if contacted, customer service will probably not be able to tell you whether you're filled, stopped out, still working, or canceled then it would seem simple and prudent to have a back up broker. I don't have another broker but I have no sense. Day trade margins being what they are, it doesn't take mucho dinero to adequately fund a back up account that could trade futures or options. IB is so big, I imagine at any given time, there could be several thousand IB customers with Globex positions on. No way that any discount broker could have the staff to wade through that kind of mess. Of course the counter argument is, instead of making 200 million a year, Timber Hill could suffice with only $198,000,000 per year and hire an additional army of reps. As far as the wisdom or validity of Trade Cents 10k a month in commission to IB, I can't comment. However guys keep in mind, that's only 2000 RT's a month. Nothing that an active 10-20 lot trader couldn't accomplish.
What other "retail" brokers can match IB's commission rates for equities/options? Do you realize that IB is constantly in the top 10 in terms of "agency/program trading"? (Last I checked, IB was doing about 65 Million shares/week in terms of program trading) There must be many IB customers that generate more than 10K in commission/month!!