It seems to me REDI will fill this vaccuum in a hurry. I remember a time when ISLD was down all day. Thought liquidity would dry up. No way. All the other ECNs turned more liquid than ever. -------------------------------------------------------- Dear IB Trader: Due to regulatory action taken by the SEC against Island, Island will no longer be able to disseminate its quotes on the QQQ, DIA, SPY, SMH, and MKH Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) as of Monday, September 23rd. This means that the Trader Workstation will no longer display Island quotes and that Smart Order Routing will no longer consider Island as a destination for the aforementioned tickers. IB will continue to route to the NYSE, Redibook, Instinet, and Arca, and will display market data for these destinations as well as the Amex. In addition, customers may continue to send limit orders directly to Island without knowledge of Island's quotes. For additional information, see http://www.island.com/etfchange.asp. -Interactive Brokers
The deadline applies to Island because it had 5 percent (or more) of the volume of QQQ, SPY, DIA in 4 of the last 6 months. Since REDI or INSTINET might replace ISLAND for the place to trade QQQ, SPY, and DIAs, then REDI or INSTINET will be the next to be blacklisted. Pretty soon no ECNs will be able to disseminate QQQ, SPY, and DIA quotes and we'll be stuck with super shitty slow AMEX quotes for these ETFs. What a joke. I'm glad the SEC continues to make the market "more fair and efficient for the individual investor." Carl
If I read it right, that means they have to wait another 6 months before going after the next scofflaw. A lot can happen in that time. You can lose sleep on this but consider the exchanges work to close off every advantage traders have, and they have always done so. I think they feel it's their right, like casinos going after card counters. It isn't a democracy, no matter how much we may hope otherwise. The good thing for us is we're resourceful. They close a door, we find another one to make their lives miserable <g>
And that's the point of trading Q's for me...liquidity, narrow spreads, and instant fills. I have very limited experience on the NQs. But from what little exposure I've had it seems to me that while the leverage is very nice, the spreads and fills are a bit too dicey for me. My style relies more on risk management than it does on being right on the intraday moves (i.e. the majority of my trades every day are often small stop/bailout losers). Perhaps when I develop a better crystal ball (if ever) I'll move to the e-minis to magnify my gains, but until them, I'm most comfortable chipping the Q's. It will be interesting to see how this changes the volume on the Q's and where that volume goes... --Derek
Could be. Then again, maybe we can get all the traders to agree to rotate to a seasonal ECN...one for the summer, one for the fall, one for winter, one for spring. That way none will get "5% in 4 of the last 6 months". Problem solved! (yeah, right) --Derek
Quite frankly, I don't think it is us who make their lives miserable, just like counters don't make casino owners' lives miserable and mosquitos don't make your life miserable. And even from our point of view, there is such a lot of unfair discrimination, ruthless killing and, yes, communist tendencies all over the world, that I think we will manage. Let us not forget that the idiots at island are crooks as well. They certainly don't look out for our well-being. Personally, I kind of like to see the CME taking away ISLD's business, even though ISLD executions happened to be about .3 to 1 second faster for me than globex. Think about it, ever since they came up with their PDT bs, we all have been kind of wondering exactly which part of the financial mafia was behind it. It was obvious that it would certainly not benefit any individual investor or trader, but we were not really sure whom it would benefit. But now it is starting to make sense: "Sorry, if you don't have $25k cash to fund an account you won't be allowed to trade stocks anymore, but there are alternatives: ES and NQ!" "Sorry, we are shutting down QQQ and SPY, but there are alternatives, and they are - SURPRISE! - ES and NQ!" If I were to favor any one part of the mob that controls the markets, it would be the eminis. Think about it: Would you rather have QQQ and SPY effectively shut down or ES and NQ?
I was surprised by that news. Hadn't read or heard anything about it. My question: Will the Qs trade on Island whether or not you can see the Island Q quotes? Confused because my IB memorandum said SMART will no longer route to Island. Last question - Of those still allowed handling of Qs, other than AMEX, NYSE which would be most like ISLD in terms of liquidity? I guess I need to load in an ECN selection for my Qs on IB. Geo.
Yes, QQQ will trade on ISLD. Their solution was to make all orders non-display so that their quotes will never cross other quotes in the market (I guess). Not sure how they are handling the fills outside the spread, but perhaps they are also adding that logic (reject such orders) which seems to me would have to slow down fills....no more "instant match" The reason IB's SMART will not route to ISLD is because SMART relies partly on price comparison, and all of ISLDs orders will be forced to non-display mode for ETFs, no matter how the user designates their order... --Derek