My head hurts from the brokerage BS. I have been trading for 6 months, took a 30 percent bath the first 5 months on my stock choices. In the last month I got my act together and I'm 15 percent to the good on my cash start-up. 2 to 4 trades a day (5,000 to 10,000 shares per trade.) Looking to transfer my account to a company that offers Level 2. Most of my looking has lead me to believe they are all crap. Does anyone actually know of a company that does not rape you with charges and have a good software offering that does not hang, freeze, or creep along with quotes. I love to trade but need good tools to work with. My style is to swoop in, take a penny or 3, or 4, and get out.
I used to use mbtrading.com (several years ago) when I was daytrading. They have an intro $5 commission per trade for the first month or two, but it sounds like you are trading 1k or more shares.. I think the commission is $20 or so (check their site) for normal 1k-2k lots. Even a $30 commission is a tiny percentage of the capital when trading 1k-5k shares, so I would focus on quality/speed of execution rather than price. When I was with MBT, I had a T1 line and rarely experienced problems except when nasdaq had problems. I used to laugh when the datekers, esignoids, and others were constantly complaining about the system freezing and things like that (disclaimer: I'm sure nowadays these other systems are highly reliable and fast!). Anyway, probably any of the real-tick 3 vendors will be good. If you really want to be sure the system is working quickly and reliably, you should probably go to one of these on-site trading facilities since they often have redundant T1/T3s and the like.
I called the thread "over educated" because after you read all the broker web sites you end up with so much hype and sales pitch, you end up with more junk than fact in your head. Wish there was a law that made companies present fact, rather than white lies. Thanks for the replys, I'm trying DTN at the moment for level 2 quotes.
Swoop, http://www.terranova-mb.com If you trade 5K-10k lots it would be the cheapest way. At 3 round-trip trades per day, your commisions will be $30 per round trip. I suggest using reserve orders on ARCA wchich will cost you an additional $25 per round trip on 5000 shares. You can change the orders on ARCA when you get partials at no extra charge (very important when trading large sizes in the decimal era). So, a 5000 shre order would cost a total of $55.00 (for both entering and exiting). A 10,000 share order would cost $80.00. Your break even on 5000 shares would be 1.1 cents in stock movement. Your break even on 10,000 shares would be 0.8 cents (you will make $20 on the first penny and $100 for every penny after that. As to DTN, all I can say is DON'T DO IT Be careful when you trade big lots. It is very easy to lose on a bad trade what it will take 20 good trades to make back, remember that!