Besides tax matter, China main market where foreigner cannot open account to trade now, may open in the next 5 or 10 years to FOREIGNERS. China tax rate decreased recently from 0.3% to 0.1% for stamp. Of course China has NO CapGainTax, if I heard correctly. If so, some trading logic can perform well than in US, by tax system. The difference of 0.2% may be accumulated to lots of house value in life, for a certain trading logic. Again, I like to try (at least) 3 different countries with 3 different tax system, like McDonald+BurgerKing+Wendy's .
For your comment "You've wasted your own time, and because I'm an idiot who is trying to help you, you've wasted my time as well." Last few weeks I spent my time in C#, crawling, selenium, DOM, etc., with my helper charging fair labour to me. However it is NOT a waste of time at all. At least I never addicted to ONLY McDonalds, ever. Anyway, thanks for your comment. No one gave me better guide than you GAT here in ET.
I mean, although McDonalds is proven best so far, one should always open BurgerKing and Wendy's as an alternative choice. No one knows what will happen next 5 or 10 years.
Bear in mind that commission is not your only cost of trading. For example when trading stocks IB is < $0.005 per side but your spread?slippage potential is *at least* 0.01 per side. So when figuring out these costs, commission is not the whole story. Next, ask yourself - if Robin Hood is free, who is the real customer? It is good to be price conscious, but also understand how they make money. In their original plan, they were seeking payment for order flow. That is, they don't charge you, but they route your order through, say, JP Morgan. Then JP Morgan shops it around to their various hedge fund buddies and/or dark pools. If you are thinking "how does this affect slippage?" then you can see why this isn't such a clear cut "free" deal. I have nothing against RH per se, and they are probably a great choice for long-term IRA investors. I think that is their target market. You sound like you are looking at high frequency trades. In any case, make no mistake, with RH you are the product, not the customer.
fwiw I found your blog via ET and one of these kinds of posts and it's a terrific resource. Also bought your book yesterday. So, thanks!
I do not understand what you mean. By "slippage", probably you mean derivatve, however I am a strictly equity trader. Also most is big stock, like SnP500, in my personal watch list. Although I cannot understand "JP Morgan shops it around to their various hedge fund buddies and/or dark pools." due to my short trading knowledge, maybe you mean "RH may sell my order info to other broker like JPM". If so, appreciate for your comment. I heard RH make money from the loan interest, not from commission. Regarding "You sound like you are looking at high frequency trades.", with initial seed of A given, in most month, I buy/sell as much as 2 or 3 times of A every month. Therefore I am NOT a HF trader.
Thanks for letting me know the book at http://www.systematictrading.org/info by Robert Carver. I didn't know the book.
By slippage I just mean the quality of the execution. If RH takes longer to execute your trades and spends a few seconds offering it around a few dark pools and hedge funds, this will impact the price you are filled at. In other words, the same order sent simultaneously to IB and RH may get better prices at IB in the long run. This is what I meant by shopping your order around; check out this quora thread on how RH makes money. https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-co...if-they-arent-charging-a-commission-per-trade If RH price is off by a penny on average, you end up spending more in slippage than you would have on IB commissions. Just saying it's not a clear cut "RH is free therefore better" situation. As for frequency, yeah you are slower than I was thinking. Most people automating trade management when they can't manage a high volume of entries and exits. So given the lower frequency RH is less of an issue.
Sure - I think it's better after reading other systems books. If you're interested in that I'd probably start with something like Trading Systems and Methods by Kaufman or Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems by Davey.
There are more than 10 trading-related books in my shelves. It is good to hear any good books recommended always.