I came across a broker that I never heard of before at RobinHood.com. They don't charge any commisions for trading. Is anybody using them, If you are how is they're service?
The concept of "no commissions" is a marketing gimmick. Everyone in business has overhead expenses and needs to make $$ somehow. If they offer "no commission", then they likely make theirs by a "larger than market spread" which they charge you. Your "cost" to trade is not just "commission"... it's commission + slippage/spread. As a general rule... the actual trading costs with a "no commission" broker are greater than others because their spread is so high/wide.
scataphagos, thanks for the reply. It makes sense. I also have a question. I have heard that IB has one of the cheapest commissions. If you have an algo that makes lots of trades, even that $0.005 per share commission adds up and makes a big amount. Are there brokers that charge you a fixed monthly with unlimited trades?
algofy, can you link a few brokers? obviously I need a fast API with minimum spread. I'm trying to search for it in google but the only thing that I get is garbage ADs.
it is the original question with a twist. it is typical of beginners not to ask how efficiently are my orders executed.
Sure, that's exactly what I want to find out. The problem is easy. There is an algo that makes many trades for small profits in backtests. The objective is to: 1- make sure the execution of the trades is as close to the backtests as possible. 2- minimize the cost of high number of trades. Any information of these subjects will be very helpful.
Google direct access broker and you shall find. You will ALWAYS lose out with a broker that sells your order flow or uses internalizers with a strategy such as you mentioned.
Thanks a lot. That's exactly what I needed. Didn't know what to search for to find relevant information in google. Searching for direct access broker finds the results I wanted to find.