I've been day trading at Echo for a two months and do an average of 10,000 shares a day. At the moment I pay 0.0075/share (NYSE). I'm wondering how much volume I have to do daily to negotiate what appears to be the industry standard of 0.005/share. My volume is slowly rising as I gain experience and confidence, but naturally the sooner I get a lower rate the better off I'll be. Any of you prop traders out there have any ideas. I'm basically looking for some context/basis for comparison.
Maybe your should renegotiate. I talked to them about 6 months ago and they offered me .005 per share. Have they changed their rates?
Was the offer they made to you (at 0.005) based on you doing an expected amount of volume or where there no volume assumsions factored in.
Echo is a good company. I'm assuming you are a series 7 and get great use of your funds. That more than covers the difference of getting 1/2 cent rate with no cap per ticket. If your size goes up, you can switch to a firm that charges $9.95 a ticket for unlimited shares. You'll get 4 times your money as a day trader. I'm not sure you'll be happy with that vs the 20 times or more you get now. I would switch to Echo, but I trade at least 200,000 shares a day.. so the $9.95 rate is sweet. RJT and Cybertrader a great choices. Good trading! Slim
You could just call other firms and see what they will give you based on your current volume then re-negotiate if Echo is more expensive.
stockfrosty We didn't discuss volume at all. They did say I would have to get a Series 7 to trade with them. I looked into it but decided that it would be too much work right now.
As a whole, what basically is the break down for commissions as far as volume goes. What is a fair price to pay, for someone doing 1--1.5 million shares a month? I also pay for quotes
You are getting .0075 per share on 10k shares a day? I would think that rate would be reserved for someone trading 50k shares a day. Are you paying for software? Are you paying your data fees? Do you have a desk charge? Are you getting 100% payout? Sounds like a great deal to me. Your talking about $25 a day between .0075 and .005.
My mentor is at Echo also and does about 1 to 1.3 million a month...he recently negotiated 0.0045(actually they just offered the rate without him having to ask, Echo is a great firm by the way). Pretty darn good if you ask me. A 1 tick trade is actually profitable trade at that rate. (talking NYSE). As I said I pay 0.0075 (currently doing 10,000 shares a day) and am sure that once I'm doing 400,000 a month (20,000 per day) I'll be getting 0.005. At any rate I'm just asking the Elite trader community for some perspective regarding rates relative to volume at prop firms.
your math is incorrect....on 10,000K the difference is 25 bucks a day. $500 a month, $6000.00 a year, not small change. And yes I pay for the software. But once I get up to 20,000 shares the software will be free. And yes I get 100% payout... and yes Echo is a great firm.