I don't know why they have keep my quote account as nonprofessional so far, even though they are charging the NASD pro fee to the account. I expect it is an oversight and one day I will not be able to trade the account. When that happens I will close the LLC account and transfer the money to the individual account and hope that the 1099 will go to the TIN for the LLC. I only trade part time and small size; $200/month for data fees doesn't make good business sense for my situation.
If you are a pro, are you allowed to choose not to receive NYSE quotes from IB? In other words, can you elect to receive and trading only NASDAQ? I emailed IB "help" about this 4 times, and no response.
ktm, i just tested an order via BEST (on an NYSE issue) on a professional account that is not subsribed to the NYSE data feed and it worked fine. In any event, I forwarded your post to the group responsible for the policy and I'll let you know what I hear back tomorrow mjt, the above should answer your question.
I routed BEST on an NYSE stock also and it put my order to buy on the Island. At the time the bid/ask was 15.55/15.60, my order was at 15.60. The NYSE Ask came down as low as 15.54 while my buy order remained at 15.60. Each time I tried to cancel and reroute to NYSE or AMEX, the order was was rejected with "permission denied". Finally I let the order sit there and after about 2 hours, the order got filled at 15.60. Tech support told me that if I don't subscribe to the exchange, that I may not trade on the exchange. I am not familiar with routing to an ECN on NYSE/AMEX stocks but I can't imagine the fills are good or fast. I normally just use BEST and let the system decide. I believe a market order routed BEST here would have taken the lowest Island Ask, which was 15.80 at the time. Thanks for checking into this Def.
the best i can say (no pun intended) is that I just rec'd a response from NY that stated there is no truth to this. Not sure what to say other than if you can provide details the audit trail should show what happened.
I will try again today. In the event that I am still locked out of the exchanges, who at IB should I send the details to?
I tried two on the NYSE and they routed fine to the exchange this morning. One of the stocks I had problems with yesterday was IVX. IVX trades on the AMEX. I do not have a subscription to the AMEX, only the NASD. This is still a problem this AM. Try this: If you try to buy IVX (put an order in far away from the market) and route BEST, you get routed to Island which doesn't really make much of a market. If I try to route directly to AMEX, I get "Order rejected - No Trading Permission, Account Requirements". Thanks Def.
I also got the message "Order rejected - No Trading Permission, Account Requirements," a couple weeks ago on NYSE and QQQ's but today it works fine--even quotes are coming up? This is a good sign.
This is what I got back from IB mgmt regarding denial of exchange access for not paying quote fees: "We sent notification to all professionals mid-March that any professionals that didn't comply with the exchange rules for market data by 4/1 would be cut off. These are not our rules, and the exchanges specify that all professionals must sign proper documentation and pay them the proper fees to recieve market data. Currently we only allow non-pros to trade without market data for a $3/month fee. Suggest you drop the market data from your vendor." The first paragraph seems to indicate that he did not understand my problem, but the second seems to answer the question. He seems to say that they are forcing pros to subscribe to market data or they will not be permitted to trade on the exchanges. Here's IB mgmt's clarification: "The exchanges expect pros to get the data from somewhere and pay the price. It is true you could get the data away from IB, but IB is not allowing pros to trade without market data because of the complications and legal overhead involved. However, we are allowing Non-pros to trade without market data because of the ease of implementation." I am also having a running dialogue with the SEC on this. While IB mgmt is saying these "are not our rules", I am having a hard time finding where this "rule" came from. In my first conversation with the SEC, the attorney I spoke with was not aware of any such NYSE/AMEX rule that B/Ds had to do this. There is some question as to whether IB is even allowed to deny access to exchanges based on the non-payment of quote fees, since the fees are specifically for the purpose of data dissemination and not an "access fee". His clarification indicates that this was a specific IB decision because of "complications and legal overhead". Now I must pay pro fees twice as last I checked IB didn't have a nice charting program. IB never asked me to prove that I was paying pro fees anywhere else, they just cut me off. I suspect I will be contributing to their "complications and legal overhead" in the near future.