Per the MB Trading website, MB Trading has increased their minimum commission on stock trades from $1.00 to $4.95 along with other commission increases and order requirements for stocks. It looks to me like MB Trading has come to rely more on their future and forex traders.
Unless they've improved their data service I don't think they're suitable for active futures trading.
Got this email on June 17th: "Effective Monday, June 29, 2009 Dear Valued Client: MB Trading proudly offers a choice of two commission plans for equity traders. Please take a moment to review a description and updated cost structure of the two plans, which will be effective Monday, June 29, 2009. Our "Direct Commission Plan" has not changed and is still $0.01 for the first 500 shares and $0.005 for each additional share. These fees include all ECN costs and apply to any trades in regular stock market hours as well as pre-market and after-market trading. Our "Smart Commission Plan" has been designed to provide an economical approach to accessing various liquidity pools and market centers. The plan provides large block traders a flat rate cost of $4.95 for up to 10,000 shares in one order. However, this plan is designed for market, limit, and stop orders during stock market hours when the greatest amount of liquidity exists in the market. Therefore, a surcharge of $0.005 per share has been added for trades placed with one of the following conditions: All shares executed before 9:30 am ET (Pre-Market) All shares executed after 4:00 pm ET (Extended Hours Trading) All executed shares using the Reserve, Discretionary or Pegged (coming soon) order types All shares executed over 10,000 shares per order With the Smart Plan, unless one of the above conditions are met, all orders that are placed outside of Market hours and are not activated until the market opens at 9:30 am ET (GTC, TTO, Stop Limit, Stop Market, Trail Stop, Market on Open, and Limit on Open orders) are not subject to the additional $0.005 per share fee. Customers can switch between the Direct and Smart Plans up to once per month by logging into the secure client area of our website. The change takes up to 48 hours to become effective. Please visit our website for further details on our commission plans at www.mbtrading.com. MB Trading MB Trading: FINRA/SIPC Member MB Trading Futures, Inc.: NFA Member 3DForex, LLC: NFA Member 1926 E. Maple Avenue El Segundo, CA. 90245 www.mbtrading.com (866) 628-3001 - Customer Service (866) 628-3002 - Equities Trade Desk (866) 628-3003 - Futures Trade Desk (310) 647-4281 - International (310) 416-1420 - Fax" First of all date/weekday don't match up. And if by "Our "Direct Commission Plan" has not changed and is still $0.01 for the first 500 shares and $0.005 for each additional share." means that they increased the minimum cost by 400%, I am sure there will be a huge back lash, if not law suits. Either way, it seems they don't want to do business with daytraders.
Having done no homework aside from pasting an email and making false assumptions, I will try to find out whats going on tomorrow. Even if old accounts are grandfathered in, I will be creating a secondary account with IB or lightspeed so as not to be blindsided in the future (I can only assume this is the first step). Thanks all for the info and the heads up.