How many of the reviewers at Barrons are traders? I suspect the most market experience they have is mutual funds in their 401k... How many of them tried to enter a Butterfly order on OX (requires a ton of looking up and typing symbols).
Which hand did I need held, when my perfectly correct order was rejected 3 times because of IB's computer glich? This would have cost ANYONE the same 1k loss as it cost me. This is the excuse that IB always uses to make it seem like it's something you've done but as I've said before I always place the identical orders on IB and Opxepress at the same time and I NEVER have any problem with Opx. IB stinks for options and if you use them you will end up paying twice as much in errors and bad executions and to top it off they will be rude to you.
I never thought I would be saying something like this but I think I just may prefer the partial manual handling at the OEX . For some reason when I have tried the SPY I lose, while continuing to trade well with the OEX. I think it may be due to the OEX being a llittle slower and appearing much less snappy. Therefore it seems easier to hold poisition and not get shook out.
When the Internet connection goes down or when you want a better pricing, TOS is the only one you can count on. Some index options do need broker like TOS to work the order or provide reliable guidance. I daytrade emini with IB. When I have problem with IB, takes me a long waiting time to have IB rep answer. If I need to place an order it will cost $$$. Last time when my cable was down , so was IB. IB was still down a long time after cable was up. One trader told me last time when the cable was down TOS broker was taking care of the options upon request.
The oex quotes are wide. There can indeed be a situation where a customer order improves the quote and you would like to hit it electronically. But a more likely scenario would be for the bid to go from 6.0 to 6.1 (instead of 6.5). Also, that 5 lot that improves the market (instead of just hitting it) while it may be issued by a non-professional, it will most likely not fall into the category of "retail flow" in the classical sense. And lastly, to the extent that this order stays on the book for a while, the floor-broker can't trade outside its price. We don't have the ability to make the routing decision (floor or auto-ex) on order-by-order basis. I think overall our customers are better of routing everything to the floor-broker than the other way around. Because of the increased competition by the other exchanges, these indexes should soon be switched onto CBOE's Hybrid system and then this issue ceases to exist. If you are looking for fully electronically traded index options, may I suggest that you explore the list I provided in one of the earlier posts.
==================== Choad; Helpful read, and thats correct; read the paper edition also .Ratings were fairly complete; dont remember if they did butterfly comps. Samson; even though I use OX & IB, and figure TOS helps by being a 3rd player; because even if OX quotes average better than IB.Neither is spotlessly perfect. Like IB says use 2 brokers; OX recently ''improved'' thier quotes & quote screen, as you may guess that remains to be seen whether it is in fact is ''improved.''
murray Thanks and I agree brokers all have some kind of issue but at least with Opx they are NICE to me and treat me with RESPECT and appreciation where with IB they are cold rude and arrogant 90% of the time (some guys are nice but mostly not).