I use IB and am very satisfied with the fast executions and very low cost. As I increase size, however, I am curious to find out what other brokers are there that charge a flat fee with the execution speed of IB.
Me too... Now than share prices are very low I must trade 2000-5000 and IB is very expensive for size. Try www.freetrade.com, but i need native MOO and MOC orders and i don't know if they have it (I emailed them 3 weeks ago about this and they don't respond me).
would be interested in hearing more about traders' experience w/ this broker. execution speed and reliability would concern me most (obviously). dog
The below link to their SEC 11Ac1-6 Order Disclosure says it all. Do you think Knight and others paying for the orders are fighting to get you the best price? One penny * 2000 = $20. If indeed you lose a penny here a penny there they might not be so free after all. http://www.advancedclearing.com/html/CLR2054.pdf
Exactly. Notice on the site that ECN's are not mentioned anywhere either. The only way I'd even consider using this broker would be if you could route to ISLD. I'm assuming (but will verify) that they do not allow ECN routing OR they have some ridiculous charge for this.
These guys are just another of the payment-for-order-flow "online brokers" (glorified email) -- not actual direct access. Their name ("free") is obviously the first warning sign.
I wonder why IB structures its fees to cater to small equity traders? You would think they would want big hitters, but maybe they have different fees for institutional. I calculate that IB starts losing competitiveness to RT brokers at about 2000 shares/ticket.
don't know if you guys were able to take part in the cybertrader chat yesterday, but we discussed this exact topic. at cybertrader, a true direct access firm, our commissions are a flat fee schedule. if you are placing trades for >1000 shares you will typically pay less than most per share pricing brokers. for more info you can visit: http://www.cybertrader.com/offer/offerdirect.asp?offer=ELTREFER&url=/fees