I negotiated commission down with ToS (it's per option contract and only slightly more than what IB charges. ToS has no data fees and no 'No trading' monthly fees)- that's why I say IB has only slight advantage over ToS in commissions. I'll monitor further in my live ToS account as to how the fills are compared to IB. Thanks rd100
rd100, what commissions did you get? The minimum I was able to get was $1.00 per contract with trade fee, which is still almost 50% more than IB.
As a long time ToS user I can tell you for a fact that TOS papermoney fills are VERRRRRY generous. It is free software to give you the look and feel, to train you where the buttons are and it is not designed for $5 million accounts exploiting $ 0.01 statistical arbitrage from the aft deck of your yacht in the bermuda (usual set up here at elitetrader.com .) If they built in some different sort of order filling .. you'd see the free-ness go away and that's not a good thing for them or newbs.
tos is definitely better to me, they have so much nicer graphs/charts for options that show you how your position/given option changes based on the greeks etc.. But nothing beats IB when it comes to jack of all trades (no pun intended). So i have a ToS with a few shares of long term investment just to keep the account open to use their graphs, then do the actual trading in IB
Never come to a form and discuss a trade without disclosing that it's not real TOS is notorious for making it look easy to get fills - but only with paper accounts. They seek gullible people like you to believe their place is better, when it is only more expensive. Try it will real money and IB is far better. Mark
Thanks all for your advice... I pay 1.25 per contract at ToS and 1.07 per contract at IB (even though IB says the comm is 0.70 per contract, I have never gotten it). I opened ToS account to leverage their platform and do small amount of trading while keeping my Friends and Family Advisor setup for 6 IRA accounts at IB. I was thinking of moving my accounts to ToS, but I'll now wait and monitor more in terms of fills in live accounts at both. IB has 10.00 fee for no-trading per month per account. To top it off, they also charge 10.00 in advisor account if the advisor did not trade enough in clients' accounts in a given month (clients accounts belong to my family here). Now you can NOT have any trades done in Advisor account, but IB requires me to keep funds in there to cover no-trading fee just in case! Thanks again rd100
You are correct about $10 monthly fee (it doesn't apply if you generate more than $30 in comissions so it is not relevant for active traders). Another annoying thing is their order cancellation/modification fee (applies to options but not spreads). But as far as I know, 70 cents per contract applies to all clients, so I don't undestand how you pay 1.07.