I calculated all the commissions and fees including charges like ecn, sec, data, etc. and my per share fee to trade at my prop firm is .008 all in. How does that compare to the costs you are paying? It turns out my trading is net positive but after all these charges the funds are down.
Have you calculated the real cost of your per share cost? Do that and then come back and tell me what it is. I'll bet it's higher than you think.
i wouldn't say it's 'way' too high. sounds like he's paying .004 @ probably way < 1M/mo. he could maybe get it down to .007, but he's not doing enough volume where a thou is going to matter. fwiw, i pay .00125 all in doing 6M/mo with some decent execution algorithms. @OP, asking for cost without context is next to meaningless. regardless though, at your stage, you need to be thinking of how to increase the profit side of your margins rather than toying with your costs. low volume trading shouldn't be that tight.
I trade with IB and they are .0035 +/- ECN from share one and then after 300K they drop down to .002 +/- ECN and other SEC fees etc... Once I go over 300K shares for the month my trades are basically free after ECN rebates. They have even lower rates for higher volumes but as I do around 1mm shares a month thats the best rate I get.
Can you please tell us where you got that deal and what is your payout. It seems impossible to get that low for only 6 million shares a month unless you are giving away a chunk of your profits. Thanks.
I can't include ECNs because I make money off them, but everything else included my costs come down to : 0.3549 per 1000 shares or .0003549 per share That's on approx 35M volume (Jan to Apr 09).
krazy is the 35 cent/1000 shares including all your rebates? If not you have to be with swift or title giving up 40-50% of profit. There's no free lunch as even the biggest brokers and prop houses pay 30-50 cents /1000 or flat fees of 50 cents or so. So either you give up profits or pay more.