My fills with IB are consistently spot-on and instantaneous, but I don't trade CL. Thanks for the reply.
I want NT and Zen, can I ask how much are u getting per r/t? I want to open an account and I heard Zen cost $1 more per trade...so instead of $3.70, $4.70. Thanks
Something around 4 euro per r/t. I have to look it up: using an euro account it's a combined price with $ and euro fees involved. (Mirus/Dorman) I have used IB via Dutch introducing broker Lynx. Please note that you need a licensed NT to trade, which isn't free! For now I'm happy with good fills, even with higher trading costs. Good luck!
The fees can be confusing, as they don't separate them well on their website. Bundled pricing is the easiest to describe. If you sign up for bundled pricing, you're going to pay $0.005/share with a $1 minimum for US equities. 100 shares costs $1 (the minimum) 200 shares costs $1 (200x0.005) 300 shares costs $1.50 (300x0.005) If you have only basic data services, and spend more than $10 in commissions per month, that's all you'll be paying. Unbundled pricing can work for you if you add liquidity. If you take liquidity, your commissions will be better if you stick with bundled pricing. My advice to everyone is to start with bundled pricing. Switching to unbundled pricing can be done with minimal hastle. On a separate note: I am looking to possibly move from IB because of platform speed issues. I constantly flip from ticker symbol to ticker symbol, and this sometimes causes TWS to lock up for a time. Also, order imbalances are a "coming soon" feature, but I'm tired of waiting. So: I hear of issues at busy times with Lightspeed. True? How responsive is the Lightspeed app when you've got several charts/DOM/T&S open at once? Will a subscription to OpenBook give you order imbalance info within Lightspeed? Thanks in advance.
I have my questions answered... Yes, Lightspeed has issues at fast times. The demo platform I am testing complained of not being able to connect around 3:30 today. The room I am in had others that are live complaining that this happens at fast times (i.e. fed days). Response times and resource usage is better than IB on my machines. OpenBook will give you order imbalances. They appear at their expected time in a separate window. I'm going to continue to test to see how often the issues around "fast markets" appear. HTH, YMMV
jmj, the platform does have problems at extremely fast times. it does run very thin on the computer as long as you don't have too many lightspeed charts open. i now have 12 tick charts and it is using about 40% of my computer memory. the reason i want to switch to IB is trading odd lot shares. lightspeed will not allow odd lot trading. i would like to use the % risk model van tharp talks about. if you risk on a trade is .23, you divide by how much your willing to risk per trade (in my case $35)...35/.23= 152. So you buy 152 shares. it basically allows you to risk the same dollar amount per trade. the problem is, the IB platform seems much slower than the lightspeed platform. i may open a non day trading account with IB to get used to the software and go from there. i was also checking out trade station. i like the platform, but the commissions are higher. and i don't need any of that fancy programming.
Thanks for the info. I now have an account with Lightspeed and IB. This is what I've found. Again, your mileage may vary. I'm finding faster, less resource-intensive software with Lightspeed. Execution times seem comparable. An NYSE TICK chart updates much more often on IB. Charting accuracy is about even. Flipping from chart to chart is much faster on Lightspeed. Trading odd lots on IB is just as painless as trading full lots on IB. IB has an API to provide some automation should you need it. It is straitforward if you are familiar with Java. C++ and Windows/COM hooks are available too. Lightspeed's API is not aparent, although I haven't directly asked about it. Most of my automation with IB was around speeding order entry. Lightspeed's hotkeys are enough for me right now. Perhaps in the future I'll look deeper at Lightspeed's API options. The LevelII/DOM/T&S in Lightspeed is much better than IB. IB's algorithm is more of a "sampling rate" type approach, whereas Lightspeed seems to be more of a direct feed. The Lightspeed application is Windows only. I have not traded using Lightspeed's Web Trader. I have traded from Linux and Windows using IB's Trader Workstation. That's my take so far.