I currently use ARCA for listed stocks for the ECN rebate( I add liquidity to over 90% of trades). I see that ICE is offering 32 cents rebate and while not a big difference if the expected executions are the same I think its worth changing. Would love to hear some experiences from others that consider the ECN rebates/fees in how they route orders.
Yes your right, typo I did try out the ISE ECN today with IB. Adding liquidity I found that 100 shares was 40 cents and 200 shares was 10 cents (5 cents per 100). The prints that I received were just as good as I could expect with ARCA and I plan to trade all my listed shares with ISE as long as the rebates and good prints continue. Of course IB TWS is wrong about so many numbers I can't be sure until tomorrow when I can look at the reports. I will report back if the numbers are different. If they are right the bottom line for me is that I just lowered my cost to trade to 50 cents per 1000 shares. Doesn't sound like a small volume retail guy like me can do better than that.
I would imagine that it doesn't really matter now. As long as the liquidity is being provided and orders are routing through several exchanges, including ISE, then the order would get hit.
It's not advantageous to post on any ECN other than NSDQ or ARCA, or the NYSE directly. Reg NMS only requires orders to get routed when on the inside market - otherwise, the ecn book gets swept for whichever ECN was used. People use INET RASH orders a lot, which only sweeps the ARCA, NSDQ, and NYSE books. People also panic with crossed ISLD and ARCA orders far more than with ISE/BATS/EDGE orders. The extra money you get from the rebate comes at the cost of getting fewer prints that are sweeps away from the inside market - and those are the best prints.
Just a followup on my experiences with ISE and ARCA I use IB and for nas stocks I just used smart routing and it was only listed stocks that I tried ISE. for some ISE gave me good entries and appeared to work about the same as ARCA. Others it was not the case. I would see trades five or six cents beyond my price too many times. Having the price move beyond my posted actually worked to my advantage a few times as I had time to move my price and end up with a better price (by a few cents). Usually I would get hit while I was trying to adjust, especially if it was fast. The kicker was that I missed some trades that I would have otherwise made (I think but don't know for sure) by using ARCA and that was not worth the added rebate amount. Of course my sample size was too small to be conclusive and some stocks worked out well. I now use ARCA for listed and smart for nasdaq but I think it would be good to keep an eye on ISE to see if the volume keeps growing.