If you have lifetime license of Ninjatrader/Multicharts, platform fees per month with Mirus appear to be zero. So, if Mirus is willing to match DeepDiscount's quote of 0.15 cents per side, then you save on software costs by going with Mirus. My 2 cents. Btw, Thanks for excellent research here.
Sadly, not true. The main problem is: Mirus uses Zen-Fire, Rithmic costs. Normally they roll it into the fee, but if Rithmic matches 15 cents, they are left with pretty much zero even at that volume. Wont's happen. Rithmic is one of the more expensive offers (not blaming them - they have a lot of use cases) and Zen-Fire is repackaged and higher priced Rithmic - makes is extremely unlikely to be willing to match 15 cents with the costs included. I dare to say it would be stupid from them - from what I know of Rithmic pricing, they would be left with only some cents left.
Hi Net, slightly tangential question. Yes, I have heard that Rightmic/Zenfire are costly. Do you know what is the reason for higher charges of Rithmic/Zenfire? What extras are they providing or what value (perceived or real) they are bringing in that allows them to charge higher. Thanks
Well, lets start from the back end. Zen-Fire? ZERO to Rithmic. It is a marketing label for one of the Rithmic services. A "distinguishing item" that at the end is just a new name for old shoes - NinjaTrader loves those, for example their Kinetick data service is a resold IqFeed, IIRC. Rithmic? High speed / High Performance trading. They advertize extremely low processing time. Naturally this is totally useless (and i mean totally) if you manually trade or trade over the internet (a difference of half a millisecond is not really relevant when you start with 20ms or more, and or have a 200ms or more reaction time), but if you get automated trading it may make a difference. On top of that, Rithmic has some really good reputation for reliability. They also have a good clean API (compared to for example TT Fix which - ah - has issue remembering what positions you have open, no joke - they reset that every night, so if you keep overnight next day it says "0"). I am not sure I would call Rithmic "expensive" - a lot depends on how you use them. Manual Trading, Trading from home - expensive, as any gain you get is pretty much surreal compared your reaction times. COULD still be worth it, but then from other dimensions (clean API etc.), not sure performance. Colocate - it may well be a difference worth paying for just from the speed point view. They offer a tick to trade latency of 250µs.
I think at 10,000 contracts monthly lots of firms will talk to you quite seriously about rates. But those serious conversations get much more likely if you can show them you are doing >2,000 contracts when you begin the negotiation. They all get calls from guys wearing aluminum foil hats (to ward off the aliens -- obviously) talking about huge volume. There mindset is to ask" how many contracts have you averaged per month over the past six or even three months". Alternatively if you are wiring in >$200,000 they tend to engage more seriously. While the $200,000 is commonplace with new securities clients it is much less common for futures traders to open up there.
Thanks Net for this information. Appreciate it. I didn't know that TT fix resets every night. Thats horrible. I have been considering switching to TT feed and possibly automating few things. Now, I guess I need to look a bit deeper into the issues that might arise with that setup. Thanks for sharing.
It is worse. One CAN work around it, but that is complex and erquires trusting the executions you get (i.e. they are ALL - then you have no problem tracking position etc. local). TT basically rolls positions and price into a "account" level every night, showing you as "position" only the delta. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=178909 has the information to this - this is still true (although the ninjatrader link does nto work anymore). One CAN get the positions from another command, but spport for that is flaky (from the FCM side). I was told for Crossling it was disabled due to stability problems, so it is not available. Your only alternative is to do all tracking yourself and KNOW your position. IMHO it is a STUPID design decision from TT - basically your "Position" in their eyes is "Daily change" which is not in line with what I understand and ever understood as position.
Nie try. The problem with this is that "tracking current position" is not always only a portfolio nmanagement issue. Tracking executions and open positions is quite a core scenario NOONE ELSE SEEMS TO AHVE PROBLEMS WITH.
I am not sure why you find this to be a problem, your positions only reset after the end of the trading day.