if you don't think bypassing broker/exchange authentication isn't criminal hacking then great, you should do it. you're an adult, i'm sure you can assess the risks. not going to help you do that at this point though. if you want citations so you can assess the risk for this type of thing, you should find them yourself. going forward in this thread, with OPs nod, would appreciate if we could keep the discussion to legal alternatives. i have zero interest in participating in this discussion if the theme is how to hack exchange/broker authentication, even if it's hypothetical. thanks.
..and viable technical/other alternatives. As for legal alternatives? L O L, What are you going to do, sue the exchanges? Write a letter to the SEC? They approved this in 2015; they're on payroll. We are all at their mercy. I've been noodling on this for months and months. The only options that I've come up with are: 1. Create a new exchange where data are free. Not an easy road. I'm taking a swing at that here: http://www.decentralizedstockexchange.com/ 2. Trade Forex, or another financial instrument where the fees are more reasonable 3. Use display only and forget about algos 4. Pull your money out of the market and invest in real estate, or a small business... maybe a coffee shop. 5. Pray. Perhaps the Lord will hear our cry.
1. I think myself, I'm just going to keep IQFeed. I use it to develop trading algorithms and backtest them. If I am asked a non-display fee then I would just use historical data. Once I had a solid trading algorithm the only plan that occurs to me is to port the algorithm into Tradestation or Ninjatrader. 2. Hope IB doesnt get hit and try to get profitable using their feed and their API Sorry about this noob question, but is trading Nasdaq only viable? Lightspeed asked me a nondisplay fee of 375€/month 3. Look for a prop firm willing to absorb the non-display fee and allowing API access through their trading platform. (this is in case Robert's info is correct meaning that NYSE charges only once per account name) 4. Yes, trading other instruments. 5. Some sophisticated hack, like automating keyboard input and screen reading. Develop algos with historical data. Automate them not through APIs, better through input automation or something like that. There has to be people trading algorithms around. What are they plans??
I investigated something called Sikuli, but I doubt the screen reading is fast enough and precise. But I like the direction of this idea. It would be like automating my hand. It would not use their APIs at all. Imagine you put a camera in front of your display that reads all the info in real time and at the same time controls keyboard and mouse inputs. It would be again non-display usage but hell, it's impossible to tell and it would not use any APIs, just the regular GUI.
We used to call this a "screen scrape." Note that writing to the screen is an expensive operation (in terms of time). It will reduce your speed by a factor of at least 10.
IB charges a different rate if you send in an API order directly to an ECN (as opposed to a manual direct to ECN order). So they have to know.
This would be an idiotic way of enforcing the non-display fee. No one in their right mind would agree to do this if they were actively developing a changing program.
NYSE has the capability of going root on Windows, Mac, and all flavors of Linux machines? There is no way.