Yes, giving up a few cents (let's say 3 ...) for 1 leg means the commission is now ~$4 per trade and you still just hope for a fill. $1.50 per trade looks much better. There us of course also the matter of assignment and exercise fees (and possibly margin rates if you are leveraged).
Good info Robert. Thanks. As for routing spreads to exchange directly i know that ISE and CBOE have spread order books. How would i know where i can route the order to? That apart, when i trade from mobile platforms (which i do quite often), AFAIK it wont let me route away from smart.
Thats correct trader42. It stinks; which is why i moved away from IB to TOS about 10 years ago. But now that i am in Canada, TD's got this $5min; and that apart, i began liking the fact that there is no charge for assignment; its a big hit on tos ($15bucks for leg). Also, i like having atleast 2 platforms for redundancy. That said, i stick to ultra liquid (think spyders and q's) stuff. So i havent had to give up more than 1-2cents yet for the spread (not per leg). Actually on tos, i am a bit careless and just route at mid-prices; on ib since the stupid thing defaults to bid, i am doing a bit more discovery and trying to route at prices better than mid, and what do you know sometimes am even getting filled. Overall, i think its all a big wash.. take for what its worth.
Hard to answer which is best. Might not matter. For the most part, very few traders "look" at the COB. It is monitored electronically by Market Makers. If you hope to trade with another customer in the hope of getting a "good" price, you have to guess where the customer flow will go. The exchanges don't post volume from the COB. And if they did, they don't separate crossed orders from orders your would have access to. Sometimes what I do is send the order to one exchange. If I feel it's close to "fair", I might cancel/replace and route to another, then back. If the order is large enough, you can split the order over a few.
Interesting info. Well.. soon someday they will smarten up and create a unified order book (like the reg NMS did for stock orders; or maybe they will update NMS for this) and we can get better fills. And yes; i also do route between ISE and CBOE mostly for my orders on tos when they are close to mid prices and i think i should get a fill while the order is sitting there; so i hear you. But you dont do this cancel replace on IB; right? probably on tos. Because on IB, i think it will be hit with a cancel fee. While we are at this i had one more question on optimizing my orders. Say i select a destination (not smart), and provide liquidity (as i usually like to sit and wait), wont i get rebate back hence reducing my commision from the $1 effectively. Or is there no rebate flowing through for option trades?
I've had a $0.01 cancellation fee on spreads, but I was using Smart routing. Not sure what it is if you route to a selected exchange. http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/ib-cancel-fee-on-single-option.277978/
Running the equities options exchange marketshare report at: http://www.optionsclearing.com/webapps/exchange-volume CBOE and PHLX gets ~19% each, with ARCA/IES/NSDQ ~10% runnerups. For indexes, CBOE is ~96% This might suggest a CBOE direct routing is the best bet (in particular if other brokers, matching engines monitor each other). There is an IB poll asking for direct routing in TWS at: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=2493&sid=10485
As for the individual options, the volume by class is a good read: http://www.optionsclearing.com/webapps/volbyclass-reports http://www.optionsclearing.com/webapps/volbyclass-reports?reportClass=cboe http://www.optionsclearing.com/webapps/volbyclass-reports?reportClass=phlx e.g. SPY CBOE 13 million vs PHLX 6 million QQQ CBOE 2.3 million vs PHLX 1.1 million
The CBOE and PHLX add/remove liquidity fees are an enlightening read: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/CBOEoptfee.php https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/PHLXoptfee.php A peek behind the curtain ...