Don, Would you clarify your new pricing schedule. What are remote traders paying $200 a month for? What is the minimum to open an account? What happens if your account falls below 15K? Bob
Please check the website for the details (I hope the link works now). The $200 is for the access to capital, the access to Redi (no other data feed is necessary - you get direct SIAC quotes), the lower per share costs, the privilege of working with me (only kidding)....but you get the idea. We have been charging $500 minimum for these same benefits, but with our new program we are letting authorized remotes in for less (and with very little trading even the $200 is rebated). We have to charge something or else we would end up with a million people to be responsible for who did not trade (which would cause for rate increases to others). It seems pretty fair, don't you think?
Sorry to interupt the Bright commercial. Thank you for your informative reply. I'll certainly keep an open mind.
Sorry to get back to the "commercial" but....there was a minor change to the pricing page regarding remote access (to be sure that you know it includes the Redi quotes and software). And, thanks to all who have emailed me for more information.
>As I said in my original post, I would love to see this system >work, and I would be glad to help you with some honest >promotion. All you need to do is show me your trading sheets >and take part in the sampling that other vendors are willing to >participate in. We all get caught up in some type of rhetoric >while at an expo, and if you can make big $$ trading the >NASDAQ I applaud you. I simply told you our experiences over >the last number of years. Don, I was just curious to know if you signed up for the SL4 trial and what your impressions were of the product after using it live for a few days? Do you like it for NYSE stocks as well? Also, what software is currently available for use at your firm -- is it only the RediPlus software, and on what basis do you make new technologies available? I've used RediPlus in the past and must say -- to put it delicately -- that it would not be my first choice.
Bryan -- for info on SL4, click on the "search" feature on elitetrader and type that in. There were several threads going on about it, but for some reason the threads have now been closed down, without any real explanation that I could find from elitetrader management. For charting and the like, QCharts is great, though sometimes there are reliability issues with it as a quote source. For example, on Friday they were actually down for several hours. Outages of that extent are rare, but they do occur. I also like TradeStation's charting flexibility quite a bit, and RavenQuote was really nice, except they seem to have succumb to the current economic downturn. For order entry, I do like IB's order execution layout of multiple route accessability and the "bring up an order line", confirm it, then click to transmit. If they only had it so that I can put a limit order to buy at the bid instead of the ask (and vice versa for a sell) I would be even happier. With RediPlus, I found that it kind of takes over your computer desktop, and can be a bit of a memory hog. IB's java applet can take up a bit of memory too, but not to quite the same degree. It's been a while since I played around with RediPlus, so maybe its better by now. But I also heard of one experience where someone entered an order in RediPlus and went into some kind of execution "blitzkrieg", and ended up buying something like 20,000 shares when the person wanted 1,000. No one figured out what RediPlus "feature" may have been triggered. If anyone has any idea what in RediPlus could have done something like that -- I'm still curious to this day. Of course, the info is second hand, so maybe my details are slightly off.
It's funny you mention buying at the bid when clicking in IB's TWS. I asked about that once by email - about having the bid price and bid price plus a standard price improvement (probably 1 cent), when you click on an offer to place a buy order. But they said they didn't see themselves adding such a feature, as nobody else had ever asked for it. Not sure what you mean about Redi+ taking over the desktop - I haven't had any issues with it in that way. I'm not sure what kind of blitzkrieg feature is available in REDI+, but I haven't seen one (and use REDI+ daily).
SIAC = Securities Industry Automation Corporation. They are the ones that capture the raw data from the NYSE and AMEX. Specialists enter orders into SIAC computers as they occur (or in the case of NYSE Direct+, the Direct+ has a link directly to SIAC and order information is sent whenever it occurs.) SIAC then distributes it's data out to subscribers like S&P Comstock, Townsend, Quote.com, etc. These companies then format the data and distribute it to their customers. Many large or companies go direct to SIAC for their data and are subscribers themselves. This can also result in a few milliseconds time savings and the elimination of one point of possible delay. I believe SLK does this with their RediPlus systems. I think that the guys who put together the marketstream product (www.uniserv.com) also have the ability to get quotes direct from SIAC. I would imagine, it would be a big benefit to firms who use automated trading systems.