I trade with IB now for the last 1 year. Their direct Access platform is the best. I never had a review problem. Occasionally when I typed a large quantity say 2000 instead of 20 option,it will immediately say Iam over the limit (avove 600k).No manual review! I have traded options with Mr Stock & Dreyfus during 1998-2000. Also OPtionsXpress in the recent past. But paying just $0.75/contract (minimum $1) & 0.005/share is hard to beat. If you want to visit branch occassionaly, may be brokers with branches like Fidelity,TD waterhouse etc are ok. If you are a serious trader you have to consider IB. I trade from a god forsaken third world Asian country in the middle of the night. If I have un interrupted power & 128kbps speed internet I have to consider myself lucky that day!. I trade ER2 ,ES,SPY,IWM options (not index options) all the time.
===================== Sue1Jeff/sue Schwab Hope it works well for you with arb hearing; & with those derivative delays you mentioned, & ''we can stick it it in our back pocket for a week if we want'' Think i will stick with IB; and let Schwab ''stick it [without me] in our back pocket for a week if we want'' And 3 minutes wouldnt suit me either ; when its time for exit
Hopefully you've also opened an account at a broker that can give you price improvement (by sending orders to BOX). Anyone who's trading hundreds of contracts of sub-$1 index options can do much better with such a broker.
Sorry, but I have to ask this. What is unique about BOX and where can I find information dealing with the various exchanges in a review approach? cordially,
BOX (and, also, ISE, to a lesser extent) offers Price Improvement on options, so while the buyer and seller can place orders on the normal 5 or 10-cent boundaries they can also say they'll go one or more cents higher or lower. The upshot is, if the spread is .95x1.00 and you place a buy order for 1.00, you may get filled at .98. I've traded thousands of option contracts at Schwab, mostly SPY, and have never gotten price improvement.