There must be some confusion out there over elocaltrading's commission rate. They no longer have the $500 monthly minimum commission charge. I believe they got rid of that last year. They offer a sliding scale commission structure. It seems very fair. The more you trade the less you pay. I trade about 10 round turns per day and pay them $3.45 per side with all fees included. There is no monthly charge for the Patsystems J-TRADER.
I forgot to mention that they must have upgraded their servers. I've been stable now for 7 days in a row. They told me a few weeks ago that they had to add more servers to their system as they have grown alot in the past six months. They're good guys.
what is the latest on elocal. read a bunch of posts here, are there still reliability issues. mainly interested in trading euronext and other exchanges. also, can you use speed keys with pats. and i have not heard of their clearing firm, how are they comparable with refco. commissions not too much of an issue, but can i get someone on the phone when i want to. thanks
cartm why would you say commisions are not too important? commisions are they most important part - since outages etc may be an occasional hit - but commisions are for every trade - and if your commision structure is not right - i believe it is real difficult to make money ( i personally do not see how anyone can make a reasonable full time income from trading at the retail rates i see quoted)
Stevet, I do not daytrade, so commissions are not as important to me as getting someone on the phone if I cant get into or out of a trade. The commission structure for elocal seems reasonable, remember there are still brokers out there who charge 20 bucks or more for this stuff. 5 bucks a side is not ib but its not that expensive either. anyway, do you use elocal. im trying to get some opinions because i have narrowed it down to 2 elocal being 1 of them. basically, its whether or not i want to use pats or future dynamics. thanks for your opinion
cartm i still dont get it - if u dont day trade - you are apperar to be someone who is happy to let your position run regardless of market moves - and if you dont daytrade - you musn't be watching the markets all the time - so by extension - you won't be around to see the very things that would cause you to get out of a trade in a hurry and the few times you are going to make a trade - it is going to be very unlikley for there to be a problem solely attributable to the trading platform - as opposed to globex etc i think most traders are aware now that $10 tops per r/t is the max you need to pay - and why not pay $7 or less - just tell the broker you want $7 a r/t the terra nova guys seem to be after more than $10 - but when i phoned them for information - i felt like i was the first person who had ever called them about futures - nice as they were - they did not seem to have any knowledge or information about futures broking - so i figured stocks is their thing and with their brokerage fees - they were actually hoping to put off futures traders elocal have had big problems which have been discussed on elite - but there has been no positiive news since - and i guess when there is - we have to make sure that it is genuine my reason for raising all this is that i personally do not believe that it is possible to make money trading in the way you describe - but i am keen to know if it is really possible - and also why a lot of people seem to be happy to pay brokers - whatever is asked - even when their trading is leading them to losses i guess you take a postion based on a signal of some sort with a stop loss - its just my belief that your stop loss positions will always eat your profitiable positions - but i am genuinely interested to know your experiences
stevet, i am not sure how you gathered that from my previous post but let me clarify. i do not have a fancy trading system. i primarily trade off of retracement levels, i also trade ross hooks. getting someone on the phone is merely a component of waht i am looking for in an ib. thsi is not because i phone trades in, i just want to know that there is someone there who can get me in and out in case of a tech glitch on my comp. i have been in positions with rt, and had my comp reboot or freeze and needing to get out of a position. as far as daytrading goes, i suppose that is a matter of opinion. i define daytrader as someone who puts on many trades per day, scalping. i do not do that. i will make trades but not scalping. anyway 90% of trading is money management. so elocal isnt any good is that your opinion, if it is , why thanks
I have said this before and I will say it again...If you are concerned about the reliability of IB and worried that you will be stuck in a trade with no way to get out, you keep a nominal amount of capital with a secondary broker who will give you liberal daytrading margins to offset your trade with IB... You use IB for 99% of your trading because if you do even average volume(maybe 3 trades a day x 2 contracts)=30/week or 120/month x $5=$600/$7200/yr...You still would save $7000 per year in commissions on just a very small number of trades... The numbers seriously add up and for that one guy I heard was doing 60,000 trades or whatever, he should really get his head checked...Why not just go directly to a clearing firm?