Oh yeah, you *could* get away with it once....but, remember, we have a big desert here in Vegas....LOL (Note to regulators....I'm just kidding, just in case you don't know).... Don
You don't need a direct access account for your IRA money. You shouldn't be "trading" that capital. You should be investing it. Direct access is necessary for quick decisions on order routing. An IRA investment should not require a hurried choice for a particlar route for the execution.
BTW, I should be more careful. If the software always checks margin by exchanging packets with the broker's servers on each trade, that could potentially add way more than 1 MS to the transit time (probably more like 120 MS more !!!) I don't know the specifics of how this is implemented at all brokers, but if I were programming the broker execution software that runs on client machine, on login, I would SSH the positions and account size into memory of the exectution software on the client machine, do simple math to calculate the amount of margin used at login and store that number locally. Then as the trader get fills, the client software woud update that information locally and perhaps do a sanity check with the main servers once every so often during non-critical times. That way the client software would not have to check with the brokers servers each time the trader wants to trade to see if his account satisfies margin requirements, and the client software can route the order directly from the trader's machine to the exchange once the local algorithm checks no margin violation. If done this way, the extra check would be way less than 1Millisecond. I do know that some brokers enforce the check at their own servers and have the front end software running on the clients machine send the order packets to the broker first. This may be a regulatory thing, or it could be fear that the client software could be hacked and the margin safety checks can be cracked. It is a disadvantage over direct access speedwise as it adds a level of indirection to the exchange. In short, Direct Access is more complicated than it seems and than I implied in my former post on this thread, and proprietary firms such as Bright or Echo may indeed have the upper hand in this case over some retail firms. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused. nitro