FerryCorsten, Thanks for the reminder - on another thread - to check out LiveVolX. I had forgotten about LiveVol's combined brokerage and software analysis option. So, after seven months do you still think LVX is phenomenal? I've looked at the site, the screenshots and downloaded a demo of Live Vol Pro and have a few questions. In LVX (available to customers of Live Vol Securities), (a) Can you change the chart style from candle to OHLC bars? The 1-5 day tick charts and the 1-2 year daily charts look like mush in candle form. (b Can you remove the 50 and 200 day moving average lines in the main chart window? (c) Can the MA lines and the HV and IV lines be slimmed down? They're pretty fat in Live Vol Pro and add clutter/reduce precision. (d) They advertise the ability to stress the portfolio and have the resulting P&L lines displayed in 3-D, but what about basic payoff diagrams for option spreads? Are they visible when you're putting the trade together and after it's executed? Can they be stressed with changes to time, price and IV? Also, can an existing position be theoretically adjusted by adding/subtracting options or the underlying? Can it then be saved as a "sim" trade for future review?
Hi Brighton. I am still very happy with LVX. I am also now a user of LVE (excel). LVX is more flexible than LVP because you can open unlimited windows and size/move them however you want. I would say your concern about clutter would be alleviated in LVX. The platform is heavy on analytics but not as much on technical analysis. If you're looking for charting comparable to something like TOS you won't find it. But TOS is not used by market makers. The risk graphs are excellent and do all the things you asked about (including vol shocks). When I switched from TOS I thought I would miss their risk graphs. But LVX is much more dynamic and informational. You can simulate anything, with or without a current position, so if you're holding something and want to see what it looks like if you add to it, that is no problem. I am super pleased with their customer service, if that stuff matters to you. Let me know if I can answer anything else for you.
their market placement and hence pricing (usd 500 for LVX?) is ridiculous. Add another 500 and you get Reuters Eicon (I heard of people with numerous license requests to even get it for sub 1k). I seriously see nothing, absolutely nothing aside their iVol db that makes this piece of software stand even above esignal. The option analytics are hardly existent, pretty much any serious data analytics platform with options data access can nowadays price spreads, combos, can run skew analytics. Additionally, most platforms allow you to upload and customize your own dividend and rate curves (have not seen that either in LVX). Dont get me wrong, the value of the iVols repository can be tremendous to some, though I highly question it is worth this price tag. Other than that, I can generate any such charts with my Infragistics Silverlight/WPF charting library within hours. What is so special about this software...? Trying to sell this as an options trading platform is an outcry. No serious options traders derives much value from such basic analytics. I add more punch on each single of my 15-20 options trading spread sheets.
I'm just guessing, but since the product's been around for about four years, maybe they've captured most of the big budget trade desks that have a need for a product like this. Knowing they can't sell it to retail/smaller independent traders for $300 to $500/mo, and not wanting to cut the price to $50? $100? $200/mo for retail AND institutional, they keep milking institutional and "sell" it to retail/smaller traders as a free offering at their in-house brokerage firm. It's a twist on smaller traders getting a high-end trading platform/TA package for "free" provided they funnel x amount of commissions per month through their broker. The twist is there's no transaction/commission minimum requirement for using the product at Live Vol Securities. Or if there is, I haven't seen it yet (still researching).
I read this thread last week when I was researching LiveVol X for a broker, and read this post Yesterday I went to LiveVol yesterday for a demo, and they told me the quote above is just legalese, and they do pass along rebates just as IB does. IB does have the same legalese, but it's in the fine print. "IB’s Cost Plus commission models are not guaranteed to be a direct pass-through of exchange and third-party fees and rebates. Costs passed on to customers in IB’s Cost Plus commission schedule may be greater than the costs paid by IB to the relevant exchange, regulator, clearinghouse or third party. For example, IB may receive volume discounts that are not passed on to customers. Likewise, rebates passed on to customers by IB may be less than the rebates IB receives from the relevant market." Here's the link to IB's fine print: https://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=commission&p=stocks1
Hey peeps I've been using LVX for about 2 weeks now, and want to shed some light on the commission. The rebates and commissions are set up similar to IB. I've done 19 trades so far. 18 were sell to open (naked) puts - almost all were splitting the middle on the bid/ask, so I was adding liquidity - 1 was a closing transaction. 10 of my trades cost the minimum of 1.50$ and the rest were from 2.53$ to 7.41$ - why were some 1.50$ and why did some cost more ??? I have NO idea. But honestly I'm not worried since those 10 lot trades would cost me 14$ at Ameritrade and 15$ at Fidelity. (I have a reduced ticket charge of 7$ at AMTD.) I'm still getting my feet wet with the platform, so I haven't done alot of trades on LVX. Also, I'm not 100% sold on the platform since it's utterly fabulous in someways and in other ways it's ridiculously lacking. Some of the things I see as problems might be inexperience and user error on my part, and I'm planning on going back into their office to ask some questions to try and figure out some of the quirks. Some of it feels like driving a Maserati... some of it feels like horse and buggy. Oh and I love the ProScanner ! It saves previous day info until the market opens, so you can look at stuff like price gainers or losers in pre-market to check out a stock. There are a ton of pre-set scans, and you can create your own. I added a pic for proof ! The bolded numbers are the actual trades - the website uses a double entry system, so each trade is on there twice. (I edited out the price and proceeds.) Oh and because I'm always adding liquidity I've been able to get an extra nickel on a few trades which is making me WAY WAY more than the cost of the commissions. I'm not always the most patient trader.... for better or worse. ps the 3$ charge was a change order fee - I entered the sell order wrong - my bad.
Just so you know, you can pay for LiveVolPro, use them for analytics, then choose any broker and execution platform you want. You don't have to clear through IB to use LiveVolPro. 1245
My take on LVX: If you're already an IB user you're probably better staying where you are for a broker ... if you're using anything more than simple US stocks/options. And as 1245 said you can pay for LVPro ... but I wasn't an IB user previously, so getting the cheaper commissions are very nice. When I was in their office they told us of many plans... but I got the feeling that those plans have been plans for awhile now. If you're jumping to end of thread - here are some video links which show LVX in action. http://www.livevolpro.com/help/LVX/LVX_Help.html http://www.livevol.com/movies/lvx-demo/lvx-demo-movie.html Last link to an LV "community" - Stefen does daily videos showing actual trades. http://community.livevol.com/index.php/index.html
FYI, they now have "Live Vol Core" for $79/mo. If you want to stay with your low cost broker, but need more options data and analysis, Core might work for you. http://www.livevol.com/online-market-scanning-and-analysis-software