Speaking of Zecco .. haha .. I think they're about to have a mass exodus. They just nixed the 10 free trades for anyone with an account value under $25,000. Minimum used to be $2,500.. My bet is people will go to TK or if they really want low commissions they'll end up at EOption if they can find it. (Noticed it's not well advertised).
I could not modify my trailing-stop order :-( The test trailing stop that was placed on Friday got executed in very weird way; I was expecting it to become market order at 9.22 but was executed as limit order (9.37) :-( 9.37 was the market price when I placed the order. Well, I'm trying advanced order to prepare another test trailing stop (screen-shot attached). Order summary is showing as following... (1) --- (2) If: FAS, Bid price is Down $0.35, Duration: Good Till Cancel (3) Then: Sell 100 FAS Stock, at a Limit price of $9.25, Duration: Day, All or None I've not indicated anywhere that I want a limit-sell :-( How can I trigger a market sell in place of this defaulted limit-sell? Also limit price is defaulted to the market price and it can not be changed. If I'm not wrong, almost everyone would like to see a market order when stop/trailing-stop is triggered. In a sharply falling market such limit-sell may never get a fill. I must be missing something... Please suggest. Thanks, Sudhaker
50,000 shares for $2.95 = 0.0059 cents per share (vs IB 0.5 cents per share + modify/cancel fee) 4,000 contracts for $9.95 = 0.24875 cents per contract (vs IB 70 cents per contract). There has to be some CATCH? Are they making money in execution?
I wondered how they could do the prices they do for a while. I came up with a few theories but in the end don't care really so long as my orders execute as I expect them to. As far as my theories go? .. Maybe they do the math on their side and the amount of people who execute 1 or 2 contract option orders are enough to make up for the people who do 500 contract orders. Maybe since they're owned by Peak6 they are piggybacking on their feeds so they have less of a cost for it (internet uplink etc etc). I forgot my other theories cause like I said my orders execute how I want so I don't care. As for the getting paid for orderflow - Most discount brokers get paid for orderflow and if you look around enough you'll find the disclaimer on the website of any of them. This still wouldn't explain how they manage the commissions they do though. You also figured based on maximum possible orders instead of realistic average.
Good point SForce. There are plenty of people out there with 5k to trade with who will be drawn to the low price. That's OH's high profit trades. Orderflow shouldn't be a concern if a trader makes certain to only place limit orders, so when the trade executes it's at the price the trader decides on in advance. Good questions. Let's be sure to bring them up this week.
Update: I'm quite impressed by OptionsHouse interface now. Sent back the paperwork already and I'm very much excited about options trading with them... There are few bugs in their current version (reported above) but their friendly customer support explained me the possible work around. If you want "trailing stop" with market order; click on "Order Ticket" button (left-bottom); delete option leg & add a stock leg. This works flawlessly and much powerful than simple trailing-stop supported by most of other brokers. Pros (in my view): * Low balance requirement with no monthly fee * Stock trade @ $2.95 is great price for low volume, part-time trader * Options trade @ 9.95 (multi-leg @ 14.95) is great price for low volume, part-time trader * Browser based rich-client interface is very intuitive. Most of the data flowing on wire is XML, making it extremely fast and efficient. * Though they do not offer direct API, we can easily reverse engineer their XML protocol and create our own API library. My 2 cents. Hope it helps someone. Thanks, Sudhaker
So Zecco CEO is currently posting to his forums to answer questions people have about them changing the requirement of $2500 for free trades to $25000 for free trades. In one he posted a "glimpse" of the new interface/platform they are working on: Does this look familiar? Anyways. That's all. Figured this thread was somewhat relevant to that.
My theories turned out to be quite accurate as I found out today. Everything between the smiley faces is how, and isn't a secret if you just ask them.
Hello SForce, I was hoping to get some feedback from you before going to the meeting today in Orlando. I'm curious what the appropriate Q&A's are you asked and if there are any additional ?'s you would like asked before I attend today. Looking forward to your response either in the forum or in private message.
And I'm loving it ;-) Extremely fast interface and very intuitive. Execution was great, got no slippage. I'm happy so far... New user may have some learning curve. But they give you a virtual account by default. I got to play with their interface while my fund was being processed - virtual account is very very helpful. Cheers, Sudhaker