It totally depends if you're a liquidity adder or taker. I have on nazz system that adds liquidity on most orders and my unbundled commissions work out to about $1.50/1000. If you're always lifting offers and hitting bids in nazz stocks, bundled is probably the way to go.
are there any rebates for adding liquidity to futures? Is it possible to get access to the better tier pricing shown under CME-Globex as a retail trader? 1.60$ for forex futures seems high seeing the bundled price is 2.85. it would be amazing for my trading alg if i could get 0.32 - 0.44 for each direction.
Also if anyone has any ideas how to reduce trade costs on either forex, stocks, etfs or futures. Please help me out.
Whether or not the unbundled pricing works for you on Globex futures depends on the number of contracts bought or sold during the month and your holding period (since there's an overnight charge per contract). A couple of months ago I spent some time with my monthly statement and recomputed the commissions based on unbundled and was surprised that I've been giving up so much in commissions. I made the switch and it's worked out well, although the daily accounting takes a bit more effort. If you're going to make the change, do it early in the month since the monthly volume breaks are computed month-to-date based on your unbundled volume only.
If you're only day trading, then you'll save money on any volume level. If you've got some positions that go overnight, you'll breakeven at low volumes. But if you're holding for multiple days, the small commission savings is wiped out due to the overnight fee except at high volumes (> 1000 contracts a month).
Does anybody know if a OPG MARKET order is considered adding or removing liquidity @ IB? I am guessing removing because it might hit another traders ask in the opening cross but I would like clarification.
In practice you can't count on this. Let's say the stock is 15.20x15.21 and you place an order to buy at 15.20 intending to add liquidity. The Auto router will usually route your shares to INET where they'll sit on the book. If, at this point, the ask drops to 15.20 on ARCA, the auto router will route at least part of your order to grab the shares on ARCA. You've just removed liquidity for all or part of your order and will be charged 1/2 cent more (diff of .002 rebate and .003 charge) than if your order was left to sit at INET. Unbundled pricing requires using the AUTO router so there doesn't seem to be any way around this. One solution would be for IB to allow directed orders to INET to receive unbundled pricing. The extra fees don't go to IB so this isn't a money-making scheme on their part - it's just a lack of flexibility that ends up costing us money.