I am about to make my first trades with real money after paper trading the e minis es and nq for about a year. In the search for a broker it would seem to come down to a choice between IB and TS. IB, obviously for their commissions and TS for their platform and possibly faster/better fills. My systems were all worked out on TS2000i which I will run alongside TWS (IB) for charting. TS6 would be nice here as I could chart and trade from same platform. From the commission side the 'small' difference between the two would cost me about $1300 a month more with TS based on average numbers of trades plus the $99 a month for the platform. I already have a subscription to e signal which I would use either with IB or TS. If, however I average a one tick improvement in fill on either side of a contract with TS this would far outweigh the differences in commissions. Would TS be any better on fills? Has anyone out there got any experience of both and how they compare on fils/order execution. I would also be interested on opinions/experiences with 'simulated' stops and stop limits (IB) Are these order types OK? Thx
TRADEDOG, I have not used TS brokerage (although I use TS 2000i) but as for IB all I can say is that my ES and NQ executions are excellent. Sometimes I'm filled before my finger leaves the hot key. Since I use limit orders, slippage is not really an issue. I don't think TS could get you any better fills. I read a lot of comments about IB's system being down from time to time, but on the futures side that has been rare for me. Certainly I have never had a broker that was perfect all the time and I've heard the same complaints from TS users. I will say that when I had TS6 (the online version they now sell only to brokerage clients) there were many times where the data feed was out for long periods of time. I think you should keep Esignal even if you go with TS as your broker. From the savings you quoted though, you should at least give IB a try...you can always switch.
I've only done about 100 trades with IB on the emini's (thousands on the stocks), and I strongly doubt TS's system could beat it. IB seems to be instaneous on the fills. The futures commissions @ IB are awesome compared to even their own stock rate on the QQQ's (a 1/3 the cost). My only issue is the stability, which is average so far, but seems to be getting worse on the stock side. I'm sure they are working on correcting this though, and I believe the savings in commission still offsets these minor inconveniences. If you're going to trade a high % of NYSE, you might want to consider TS first.
You are nuts to consider TS over IB, particularly since you already have a charting program. The ONLY reason to use TS is to do backtesting. Take a portion of the first month's savings and buy 3 or 4 extra monitors and you have negated any posiible advantage of having it all in one package. You will not beat IB's fills on the mini's, certainly not with TS. There is a lot to be said as well for having multiple data feeds.