YW. Redsky is a minituare IB in many senses. It has a prorpietary side and a retail side (the proprietary side is called Speed Trading Group,) it has it's own direct lines to the exchanges with dark fibre to the east coast ECNs, it has a better phone support staff, it has first rate programmers with a unique front end, it has both a proprietary and a FIX API, and here is the kicker, because the company is small you can talk to the principles of the company at much of the time about anything relating on how to make them better serve you, AND THEY LISTEN! The only difference between RS and IB is that IB self clears whereas, on the retail side, Resdsky is an Introducing Broker for ML, BS, GS, etc. BTW, I believe their proprietary side is an FCM, so as their retail business grows, it is just a matter of it being a good business decision to become an FCM. I don't know - probably because using Redsky is an edge, and who wants to let an edge out of the bag? This is probably one of the reasons. RS is set up to cater to institutions. Recently they decided they were ready to take on the retail side and have employed to meet the expected client volume. I have an institutional account with them that clears Merril. I don't know what the minimum is because I sent a non-minimum amount of money... nitro
I want to give a big thank you to everyone who posted to this thread. All the info is very helpful and greatly appreciated.