Many here say good things about IB, so I'll take them more seriously. For now, my problem is that I have very limited amount of money and can only fund one broker account. (I would like to have minimum 2 DAT accounts-with different clearing firms, and both with good phone back-up-, so that if one gets stuck with open position that I need to exit, I can simply enter an offsetting position on the other broker.) At least myTrack which I'm using now can be reached by phone quickly, based on the calls I've made. People here have mentioned that IB is hard to reach on phone. I don't want to wait long on the phone if I have a leveraged position and the broker's system is down whatever.
YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Ib is not nearly as fast a hammer, watcher, tradecast, redi or gratetrader. You can make more $$ if you switch to a better platform. Commissions too low?? they charge a $1 per 100 right? others only charge 3.50 per 1000 that (0.35 per 100)
It can be.. that's why you practice with the demo system.. From the menubar: Configure->HotKeys Esignal offers integrated order execution.. Ahhh, but its so much cooler than that.. Hotkeys turn it into a video game (dangerous thought, I know)
I'll take the bait... Quote from trader963 YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Ib is not nearly as fast a hammer, watcher, tradecast, redi or gratetrader. You can make more $$ if you switch to a better platform. Huh? I've used gr8trade. It's a big, slow, bandwidth-sucking behemoth compared to IB's TWS. Put up some numbers and let's find out. Specifically, let's see how long it takes from when you send a non-marketable order until when it shows back up in your Island quote. Of course, you'll need to do this via an API in order to get millisecond timestamps that create a meaningful comparison. We can bench the other ECNs and exchanges, too. From what I know, if IB isn't the fastest or reasonably close to it, they'll want to do something about it. others only charge 3.50 per 1000 that (0.35 per 100) Who? For taking liquidity? Off what ECN? What about other ECNs? What's the minimum volume requirement? As anyone who's traded direct access for more than a minute knows, rates most places depend on all these factors - you can't just throw out a single number.
I since it seems like soo much firm promotion is going on I'm reluctant to mention the firm or platform I trade on. This is getting interesting! I'm interested in hearing the speed difference. I will don't use IB, but I do use one of the platforms mentioned so I'm interested. Commissions I trade at, a $3.50 base rate with no minimum volume requirements and the ecn's costs are about the same everywhere else. All in (every fee including sec) I average about $5 per 1000. If there is a difference I may be interested in switching I don't work for any firm.