We are not those firms. We are just people, like Soylent Green. 2 bucks per turn? That is a nice number. If anyone here qualified for rates like the ones you are suggesting, well, we would not be retail jamokes. Fine, we are garbage. We can accept that. Because anyone who qualifies for .000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 dollars per turn is doing some serious volume. I don't think anyone posting here is doing that. So we accept the rates we are given, which is not that bad in the grand scheme of things.
The is customer money on the advisory side. The SPY has a position 750X that and Citadel - for what it's worth - is not a clearing member of the CME.
FTC is the Federal Trade Commission, and I do not believe that they have jurisdiction over them. The CFTC could investigate unfair practices, but the CME has the right to charge what they wish. Also, they have exclusivity on certain trademarks such as SP. I am not saying that I justify their charges, instead presenting the legal side if pursuing them. You could go to other exchnages such as Eurex, ICE, and Osaka to trade similar contracts that have similar liquidity in some products. Also, you could get a lease on the exchanges that will substantially reduce your fees. If you are a trader that trades daily and does substantial volume, it would be in your best interest to get this membership.
The curious thing is when Eurex came into town to trade a competing debt contract - they got virtually no support.
Many exchanges tried to compete with some of the contacts listed on the CME, and sadly it went nowhere. Established FCMs are dinos. They don't move, neither do their clients.
The gov investigate them? CME/ICE duopoly is clearly the gov puppet to limit up/down the market whenever they want. That is why there is no competition as competition would remove gov control. With stocks/options there are FREE commission brokers. There should be free future commission brokers too by now but sadly the free market is not there when it comes to future brokerages. You can look at future crypto exchange and they PAY YOU when your limit orders(aka be the market maker) gets filled. You only pay a tiny fee if you market order. Thats how it suppose to be. Just look at Small Exchange, they can't even get off the ground and its started by one of the most experienced people in the business. If he can't get things going imagine the average user.
Part of the pricing key is monopoly clearing - that is the country club that keeps members out. If the CBOE hadn't opened up OCC to the other exchanges. Someday some court will crack the SPX monopolies in the same fashion as the SPY monopoly was cracked. ISE made an expensive run at it and failed. CME/CBOE's cash cow.
"Free" commissions do not apply in these brokerages when you want to trade on leverage or short. What about the fact that they make you pay .25% commissions? Just to give you a perspective, if they applied the same fee on a notional fee of ES (today's price), it would be $375 per side! Institutions always created opportunities for the retail trader. Stick to what is liquid. Micros are liquid now, so good luck to the "small exchnage" competing with that.