So much information here that I am confused. Here is the ultimate question; am I gonna lose money by trusting the asks and bids on Level II of scotrade or Ameritrade? Inother words are they manipulated or not? Since I am planning to buy very large number of shares and If I got ripped of a penny that is alot. Can someone answer?
ripped? no... slippage? yes... best price? probably not... reason? spread... solution? A, use open book. B, subscribe to data source. C, consider IB.
very good answer thank you I will call my brokerage to see if they offer open book and for the datasource how much is that per month or year? And do you have any experience with IB?
TD Ameritrade doesn't have a number of shares limit for $9.95 Trying to buy or sell 20k of a stock that trades 100k a day is going to move the stock. Use the broker assisted order to do that, and allow him room to make profit so he executes your orders. Trying to trade in and out that many shares of an illiquid stock is dangerous, IMO.
So if I use broker assisted trading, can he buy it for say 20.00 and tell me he bought it for 20.05? Is this possible? Otherwise broker assisted trading is perfect for people like me since I am working 9am -5pm.
In this age in instant IT, I doubt they'll lie to you about the actual price, but they'll certainly charge more in commish, and you really don't know who they bought or sold the shares from (themselves? selling of order flow?), etc. Just an comment here, if you don't mind. Buying and selling of 20,000 shares is all relative, of course (we do much larger trades all day long), but, for retail trading, I don't think your major concern should be whether you pay $9.95 or $99.99 for the trade, it's the entire concept of gambling on direction, especially over a week-long time frame. One thing to go in and out for pennies intra-day...ok to hedge off for long term, but the basic concept is a bit hard for me to understand. I may be missing something here, if so, please enlighten us. Don
i agree, i have having trouble understanding your problem with the commission if this will be a long term trade. day trading 20k clips is one thing, but that is not what you are doing right?
They're not going to take the other side of your trade. They CANT fill your order at one price and tell you a different one, thats ridiculous. ALL ORDER FLOW is sold, every last share of it, thats how come they can slash commisions. Its sold for fractions of a penny per share so they're not making big bucks on one order. No offense but this thread is getting a little ridiculous. If you think you're going to trade into 20k shares of a stock that trades 100k a day on a Monday and trade out of them on a Friday and make money you're mistaken, especially if you're not even going to watch the markets all week. In addition the overwhelming fear you have of getting ripped off for 2 pennies or a nickel tells me you should not be in the market. Just like in any profession there are good people and bad. If all these brokerages were ripping people off constantly and front running orders all the time it would be obvious and people would take their business elsewhere. There are tens of thousands of people on ameritrade at any time using their service if you really believe they look at every order and then decide if they want to break the law and take the other side or front run all in the space of about 3 seconds you're really paranoid.
Thanks for all the comments. when I said 100K daily volume, that was just an example, usually stocks that i trade have more volume. I guess I will go with broker assisted trading. Only pay 20 bucks and he will do the trade over the phone. Hopefully it will cover unlimited shares.
Ok, this is what I decided to do. I will open an account with one of the brokerages that lets you trade 20K shares but you have the option to show only say 200 shares. That way if I place the order before the market opens, I would not move the market with my market order. What do you guys think?