I've been dilly dallying around opening an account with Echotrade because of the concern with professional exchange fees. It's not paying them once a month that bothers me, but having to pay it over and over again. I'm going to contact Echo again next week about these concerns; in the meantime, here is what I'm thinking; let me know if any of you using a professional firm have gotten around all this. (I remember rtharp saying he has someone else subscribe to third party software for him, so he can get around paying pro fees there, but I'm not sure I can do that in all cases.) If I were to open an account with Echo, I would still plan on using two other brokerages. First, IB, if only for options trading. Second, OnSite Trading, because they have the most extensive short list that I know of. (Unless Echo has a large short list, then I could dump OnSite). So I can't exactly use someone else's name on either of these. Plus I use third party charting software, and from time to time I try different tools that require live quotes, and I consider it a pain in the butt to have someone else sign up for a service that I'm using. Plus if I had someone else subscribe to these services, I imagine I couldn't write off the expenses for them from my taxes. I don't know; maybe I could get away with not telling all these parties that I have a pro license, but I'm just afraid somehow the NYSE is going to find out about it years later, and all the sudden demand back payment of $127.25/mo for every software, brokerage and who knows what else that I've been using. Am I being paranoid here?
MJT first Echo's short list is extremely extensive. I don't have a don't short list but instead a hard to borrow list. I've shorted quite a few stocks on the list at times with no problems. Remember being a professional also means you can now short stocks under $5 which is something I tend to do a lot. 2nd how about this? Why don't you try to open up a corporation or a Limited Partnership. This is a seperate entity once it is done. They can be a subscriber for the quotes. I've opened up a Limited Partnership recently for about $600. In fact there are huge write off's available by using a corporation or Limited Partnership for a seperate income. contact http://www.sageintl.com for more info. rtharp
I would strongly recommend against trying to hide the fact that you're a pro. The fines for getting caught are high and you will likely get barred from the industry for quite a while. I, for one, would hate to see my name in the weekly SEC action list in the Wall Street Journal. Is $150/mo worth the downside risk? Bad trade in my oppinion.