According to an article in today's (June 7) Barron's magazine (Theresa W. Carey's Electronic Trader column) OptionsHouse and tradeMonster, are merging in a deal engineered by private-equity firm General Atlantic, which has a substantial financial-services portfolio and previously owned stakes in the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, and online broker E*Trade. I trade with ToS so this doesn't appear to affect me (yet) but it may be of interest to those of you who have a business relationship with the companied mentioned in the article. http://online.barrons.com/home-page Best
I talked with Options House on Friday, those of us who funded accounts prior to the Merger will not have our commissions altered. I would be willing to venture if you were to deposit $30,000 or, let's say $10,000, they will allow you to be grandfathered in to their previous commission structure. The deadline was suppose to be before June 3, I hope Trade Monster does not bring their high commission structure and screw with Option Houses's good thing! Option House is very fair to people making higher ticket sizes, more than 25 contracts, compare that with OptionXpress's $12.95+$1.25 vs $8.75+ $0.15 per contract. The good folks on EliteTrader have warned newbies, you must reduce slippage and costs because this game does not forgive easily!
They have an excellent looking platform. there might even be OPRA quotes. I think the engine behind their spread scanner is ivolatility, Brighton might have noticed this. I do recall a drag and drop algo building program from some vendor. However, Trademonster was their second tie in and they must have had a falling out too.
I think you meant LiveVol in the first paragraph? Here's the blurb about the LiveVol-TradeMonster connection. http://www.livevol.com/testimonials Re commissions, TradeMonster can be a better deal than OptionsHouse for smaller trade sizes. I'm at 50 cents per options contract, no minimum ticket fee, so a 10 lot outright is $5 and a 10 lot spread is $10. I didn't have to try very hard to get that rate. I said I would transfer a fair amount of money but I told them upfront it was not going to be frequently traded (it's an IRA).
Actually, I did mean ivolatility. Livevol scans for price, vol, and flow. ivolatility has scanners for optimum spread combinations with risk/return. A lot of brokers outsource the engine to them for spread scanning. Can you do FoP analytics on their platform or is that another platform?
https://www.trademonster.com/why-trademonster/futures.jsp This is a fairly new product page for them. It appears some integration work has been done. Before, it was sign up with Knight Capital (KCG) and use one of the platforms offered by KCG. I don't see a bullet point for futures options analysis and it seems like they would tout that, but I haven't asked.
Let me show you how much money I saved using my low cost brokers. This has been one of the heaviest Option Trading weeks all year. I know for the big boys it's not much, I day traded, held overnight and bought some longer term positions. Thursday I bought and and sold, a few thousand Facebook contracts plus I carried some over. I started off by selling the Calls when we gaped to $66.4 400 contracts at $.50-$.74 I bought the $67 Puts, $66 Puts, $65 Puts and sold the $66, $65.50, $65, $64.50 and $64.00 Calls. In total, I think I am going through Shell Shock syndrome from all the chaos. Since Monday, it's been a heavy week and I wanted you to see how much it would cost you to trade with a high priced brokerage vs a fair priced brokerage. One of my Facebook trades from the start would cost you: 213 Facebook $66 Calls OptionXpress $266.00+266.00 roundtrip is $532 Options House $8.75 +$31.95, it took two orders so to be fair, the comparison is: OptionsXpress is $540 vs OptionsHouse $92.40 including all the Reg fees What is OptionsXpress offering anyone who trades size and volume, can you tell me? You can see why I am passionate at trying to get the Newbies the lowest cost possible. One ticket of selling 100 Facebook Calls at $.70 is: OptionsHouse $8.75 plus $15 + (If you decided you need to route to a ECN $.10), on Facebook even GMNI and BATS are getting almost as fast of volume as CBOE, ISE an1d Amex. $23.75 plus Regulatory commissions or pay OptionsX OptionsXpress is $12.95 plus 90 x $1.25 $130.00 bucks I rounded it up to. OptionsHouse offers as much as OptionsXpress, so why is OptionX so greedy?
I think OptionsXpress is fine for the occasional trader, including those just starting out or perhaps as a place to keep retirement funds, i.e. buy and hold type investments. Using their advertised rates, it definitely is not the place for active traders, but neither is Think or Swim. Caveat: it's possible that active traders negotiate far better rates than what's advertised. Schwab bought OX for about a billion dollars and they inherited some big legal headaches caused by former OX executives. TD Bank/TDAmeritrade bought Think or Swim for about $600 million. I wonder if one or both parent companies regret their decisions...
Brighton, I tried hard to negotiate a better rate, you would be disgusted with their offers. Their best price was higher than what I pay with my full service Brokerage Etrade. Fidelity charges me $.50 a contract plus $6 min ticket. I am waiting to test out Tradier, currently I am testing the waters on E-Option, they have a good platform and their commission structure (Over $25,000) is really reasonable. I don't know anyone who has gotten OptionsX to reduce their commission below $.70 per contract, do you? OptionsX is greedy in my opinion, your better off using a lower cost Broker who provides you with more services. I do have a small amount of cash with OpX only for grins. Look at the price comparisons for E-Option, anyone trying to trade for a living can't ignore their prices! http://www.eoption.com/broker_comparison.html $3.00 plus $.10