Ask him again and see if he gets loud and bad tempered again. Then ask him why he is getting loud and bad tempered. It would be interesting to hear his story. Unless he is ranting and raving so loudly you can't hear his story. He might just have some kind of mental problem...
I am not going to see him again. He just started a meetup.com group and I just joined but I'm not going back.
LOL, another way to look at it is, if IB does take the other side of your trade, and it is executed quickly, get out, but I guess it comes down to your trading.
Here out of 2,000,000 shares/month... about 2.2% print SMART... Though I suppose that does not rule out arrangements with ECNs. For example, IB often routes to Island instead of AMEX... And the Island order is Dead On Arrival... Whereas it would have a good chance of fill on AMEX. What is the deal with that? But the interesting thing is that the average share size that prints SMART... Is much less than average size NYSE or any ECN. IB has some kind of sophisticated strategy... Where they peel off about 200 shares from very select trades.
Actually... The routing issue is probably related to "unbundled" pricing... Which pretty much forces you to use only SMART. Like... right now... I CANNOT route an order for a particular stock to the AMEX... IB will NOT route the order... just sit on it and freeze it. But if I route SMART... It goes to Island... where chances of execution are near zero. But this is quite rare... And a small price to pay... for those great "unbundled" rates.
IB even pays for order flow from other brokers; so obviously IB customers' orders will be routed to IB/Timber Hill. But I don't see anything wrong with the above unless YOU were trying to buy at the bid OR sell at ask, but the trades of IB customers were being routed to the exchange where Timber Hill places their bid/ask, instead of to you. As to the answer to this question (at least about options), see http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1263185#post1263185
to be fair, as far as my experience goes, it just cannot be even be close to a bucketshop: when i had timber fillin' me trades i was doin' much better than now and when i was goin' trough my worse period timber just disappeared and was never to be seen again. i am really wonderin' why on earth i never get a fill there with all the trades i make. i mean, if they make a mkt what are the odds?