Are there ways not to pay commissions? Would something like starting threads/blogs in which one would mention the broker, and in return one gets zero commission be a possibility? I would be interested in reading your suggestions.
http://www.merrilledge.com/m/pages/zero-dollar-trades.aspx I'm not recommending them -- just answering your question.
Some brokerages are now charging no commissions for trading certain ETFs. There are some threads about this in the ETF Forum. Happy Searching.
WF offers a similar deal to BoA-Mer's, http://bit.ly/ekLEoK And Zecco was famous for free trading, but that deal ends for good on 3/31, http://bit.ly/dOuw3w
Trade direct access and only use ecn's that have positive rebates, buy and sell on NSDQBX, get .85 per 1000, get less than .85 per 1000 in commissions (you're gonna have to do lots and lots of volume). Thats the only way I know of.
As another poster stated, some ECN offer rebates. I finally learned how to do this properly today. After going way up on fees scalping on one stock I managed to reduce my fees to $.03 by the end of the day. Don't do limit bid/offer or market orders. You need to make sure that you don't remove liquidity. You accomplish this by in all cases selecting the bid/offer price. Actually, I found this better anyhow because I wasn't entering the trade each time 'out of money'. It gave me a larger spread, more profit, and a credit on every transaction reducing my fees from $17 to to $.03. If I manage this again tomorrow, I will finish the day having added to my profit with these credits.