Personally, I would like to see other things preferenced in the IB development queue. Tick-by-tick quotes would be nice, but it's probably not going to happen. Instead of bullets, how would you like a sell order that automatically stays at the best offer (within a limit you can set, of course, otherwise it would almost be like a market order, and I would not use a market order)? Or maybe they could come up with an order that automatically stays at a certain offset (aux price) from the best bid/offer. This offset value should be allowed to be positive or negative. Also, what makes you think the cost of a bullet would be less than the spread you might give up building an options position (conversion or just a deep put or even deep call) yourself?
All of the above would be awesome... However, the cost of a bullet at a prop/prof firm is simply the commision per share - there is no "spread," - it is factored into the commission. Futher, you don't have to do anything at the end of the day - the option(s) expires automatically [you check your statements the next day just in case, but you are supposed to do that for any trade] In addition, in order to do this correctly, the margin requirements should be close to zero to put it on, and obviously they would have to be electronic and superfast < 2 seconds... nitro
I have gotten a lot of PM's about this - it ranges from .02c - .04c depending on whose quoting [I have gotten both from retail and prof/prop] I suspect that you will get alot of PMs now as well. I will leave it to them to negotiate it with you, as it is not my place to repeat what I was offered by whom. nitro
lots of suggestions... quotes: many of you have noticed but if you haven't, new code recently went in that should have improved the quote feed. you'll still get the .7 second snapshots but i guess that is a tradeoff to conserve bandwitdh and the network. at least progress has been made on that end. short sales/offsets/etc: there are already a few types of offset and relatitve orders programmed into the system (for a list/explanation, see the manual). For the others that you describe, in the meantime I would suggest: a: use the api to program your own order types, b: what happens if you send a limit order through the bid. (the system will raise it one penny to get an uptick). I'm not 100% certain if it will trail the market down by a penny but you can try
Are there any hidden charges to bullets such as margin or processing fees? Is margin handled exactly like short stock once you sell stock?
IB really ought to begin offering bullets...that would certainly go a long way to closing the gap between using IB and trading with a pro firm.. or, an even better idea, let's get rid of the uptick rule! yipee!
If (and that's a big if in this environment) SSF's take off, you can bet your bootie that the uptick rule will go away. The stock market boys will be crying boohoo about unfair competition from SSF. I can't wait.