trade555, Why do you say BEST is bad? Since the advent of SUPERSOES, I have been basically satisfied with it, but I could be missing something. I trade big liquid stocks. PRIMEX was bad news, but it seems to have been deleted from BEST . Anyway, what problems do you encounter with BEST? Thanks in advance for your reply.
I usually trade NYSE and I always want my order run to the specialist when I use best I get fills on isld and primex I don't want those fills. They don't match my order with big prints. As for nasd I don't like the use of market orders so if I don't get filled in a second I want to cancel and with supersoes I usually get a bad fill if I use isld I make or break the trade.
RE: Best at IB...I track my fills vs. what I expect to be filled out for almost every order and with 300-700 shares in liquid NASD stocks, I'd estimate I'm always filled at the NBBO or within .02 95% of the time with market orders. Shorting is surprisingly close as well at or within .04 of the inside market.
Have been with IB two and 1/2 years. Had a market sale on QQQ today when the bid was solidly at 38.44. Noticed it got routed to what I think was AMEX (would have to verify this for sure) and finally executed at what seemed like an excess of 10 seconds, at 38.34. A full 10 cents lower. Could have paid a regular commission for that amount. Other trades went fine when routed to ISLD. Should we just specify ISLD or what instead of BEST?
You really need to avoid AMEX if you can. I have had similar experiences with AMEX and QQQ, but I use limit orders, so I just miss the fill. I have a lot better luck using ISLAND. For big Nas stocks though, I have good luck with best. It would really be nice if IB could make BEST so that each trader could choose which routes would be included - that would be awesome.
About the AMEX and trading the QQQ,SPY and DIA the traders on the floor will screw you as much as possible. These traders make there money on the spread and by making or killing the premium. They don't trade for the direction. The only time you will get good fills on the AMEX is when the volume gets real heavy and they are making good money on orderflow. If they don't have good orderflow they take what ever they can and you are there food. Also the other reason they are this bad is they have big bills like a second home and a big apartment on the upper east side there toys are expensive and they need to eat a lot. If you are going to trade AMEX use only limit orders preferably ISLD.
Re the complaints about customer service, what are these complainants calling about and how often do they need to call about whatever it is?? I've had accounts with many firms, some for many years. I can count the number of times I've contacted them on one hand (maybe fewer) with the exception of my full-service firm (where the broker contacts ME constantly).
I really don't think the frequency with which someone calls customer service has anything to do with it. One should get the same quality of response no matter how many times they call. I think IB provides a great service. But everything needs improvement. IB's weakness happens to be customer service.