How much money am I leaving at the table by not using a 'real' broker like IB? How much of a spread I am I missing out on, or being cheated of? Curious. SPY/SPX options are virtually very liquid and easily filled everywhere you go. i'm not necessarily going to bicker about a penny or two or five or even ten...when my profit %'s are relatively huge.
I just wanted to chime in here as I recently opened an account at ALLY It's definitely a lot simpler than IB Not sure how the executions are compared to IB since I don't have an account there but if you are ok with 5-10 cents over the mid you should be able to get filled I don't believe they have an API but I have not asked specifically for it They do provide interest on the cash as most brokers but it's very low as you might expect I have been using it with SPX with simple spreads and it's working well so far I want to see how it handles BWB's and condors before recommending it One oddball thing I found is that for some stupid reason they charge the index fees separate from the trade It's only 0.35 cents per contract so it's not like it's going to kill the commission with that So you would only find out the cost of the trade when you get the statement because it's not in the confirmation I got around that problem by looking at the transactions or I can just multiply the fee by the number of contracts and use that as the price of the trade and even so the commission is quite low Maybe not as low as IB but at least you don't have to out up with that complicated platform and other separate fees