IB charges 70 cts per contract (less if it's 5 or 10 cts) and I think 50 cts if over 10,000 per month. There's probably a lot of cancels in the $9.95 you're paying. They offer an execution credit and AFAIK, it's higher than the cancel fee so you might find that the cancel fee has less pinch than you think. Only you know how many orders you cancel (versus fills) and that may be the key to whether it's a better deal or not. Also, free assignment/exercise. IB also has an unbundled commission rate for equities. ETF's. warrants, futures which can be even lower, depending on whether you add or remove liquidity. Don't know if they offer it for options yet. No data fee if you generate $30 per month in commissions. Since details change over time, check their web site out for more up to date info.
IB doesn't charge cancellation fee(exchange fee) for -equity spreads - index option & index option spreads. IMHO, IB is way better than TOS/eoption interms of commissions. You can keep the TOS for all the tools/research and use IB for execution etc
I am basically going over the same search process so here is my 2 cents... I have excluded IB for a simple reason: their trading platform is stand-alone so you have to install it every freakinwhere (I use many different computers in different locations). They do have a web-based platform but you can't even do spreads on it... I am not legging in, no way. I am curious: have you considered trade monster? Their commissions are decent and their platform seems nice... Any reason to not consider them?
Thanks for the info. Does CMEgroup offer weeklys on ETFs? I could not find information there but in case it is hidden somewhere. Thanks