What is missing here is true price improvement and other costs. Def's link compares IB to the entire industry. It does not state it just applies to direct access brokers. So I'd not use the full IB price improvement claim, but a fraction thereof. I think most people will acknowledge that IB's SMART system is very efficient. The Efficient Executions platform (from the web site) appears rather constrained. So I'd say IB would get you better executions and fills since it will go to another exchange if there is improvement or the bid or offer is gone by the time your order hits. Both IB and Efficient charge for the data feeds but IB will be slightly less per month because they waive their $10/month basic feed charge if you do $30 in commissions. They just charge for the Level II type accesses. IB does not charge for its platform, Efficient will charge you $250 for the first month and then waive it after the first month if you do >100K shares every month. IB customer service is not for fools or neophytes, and as a beginner you might be unhappy with IB. I'm an IB customer and it has gotten better over the years. IB recently raised their account minimum to $20K so perhaps the customer service folks can spend more time with a newbie - hard to say. So the question is whether not the SMART system is better than whatever it is that Efficient offers, I suspect it is as IB has always been a leader in technology. This implies better prices for you which may or may not beat the commission differential. For each million shares you trade per month, if you just get a penny per share improvement because of SMART, you are ahead (win or lose on the trade) $10K. If it only helps half the time, $5K. Understand that the SMART system can be tailored if you want to take advantage of its features. Look at the link within the link Def posted. Whatever you do - get away from eTrade and go to a direct access broker. Jack
I trade about 800K+ shares per month and have traded with IB for years. There customer service has improved but was so bad that I had to explain to a customer service rep about a year ago what adding liquidity meant. I am having the second issue with IB in as many months and this time after spending way too much time they said "wait until the next software update and it will be fixed" The problem is that IB current software will only allow you to have three book traders. For someone trading many different securities this is a problem. One thing I do know about IB is that you will have no rep and at a million shares per month in business you will still be a nobody that can wait in line for whenever they feel like dealing with you. I guess that they are so sick of dealing with poor customer service ratings that the rating page doesn't even work after a chat session. Or at least it has not worked in over a month.
I've hesitated on the unbundled because of the documentation problems that have long been noted with this option. The latest communique from them said that the new statements are doing some upgrading on unbundled commish. Do you know if they give you meaningful breakdowns now?
Sorry I can't answer that for you. I no longer have an account at IB. With them you never know what the hell is going on. Where I have my account now I get a breakdown by Symbol then Fill and for each Fill I get a breakdown of the amount of shares the commish, Exchange/ECN Fee, and SEC fee.
well i finally got to experience how shitty etrade really is.. and ofcourse it was the last day before i switch to IB.. i was buying 6k shares.. it would buy 500 instantly and the other 5500.. honest to god took 30 seconds to fill i was losing 2-4 cents on each buy and each sell.. i losing 7 cents on one trade... F etrade!