Yeah but do the Futures firms have the cleanest balance sheet in the business and clear through Goldman????
The 'fish' he speaks of are the retail orders that are left sitting in the book when every algo decides to piss off.
1 ES = 500 SPY not 1000, so cut the SPY commish in half. Bad fills on stops can happen in any market, even the ES. Comparing Don's rates vs a cost competitive futures firm that has an exchange seat is comparing apples to oranges. You might as well be comparing against Charles Schwab's commissions. Every time I do the comparison, I go back to SPY. A .25 point tick to trade the ES when the floor is at .1 tick is like paying your own special Chicago tax for the privilege of using Globex. No thanks. But to each his own, I'm not slinging around 50 lots. Everyone has their own specific needs.
No, I said one RT that means 500 to buy/500 to sell, that is the same as buying one lot and selling one lot. So 1000 shares equals 1 RT in the mini. So no, the commissions are not half. I agree the e-mini and the SPY both are god awful trading products. My original post was about the single and double leveraged products that Don is speaking about in his advertisement. Then someone brought up SPY.
Fair enough. But tell me, do your equity traders who hedge or take occasional position trades in SPY also get access to the ES at that rate? Or is it strictly for high volume futures traders?
So let's say $.50/1000+$1.00 in SEC fees, = $2 roundtrip, vs $.60. Basically the SEC fees are what makes the SPYs non-competitive with Globex ES here. I'm not considering ECN fees because if one has an adding liquidity type strategy, they'll be better off than on Globex because their transaction costs will result in a net credit.. or vica versa. And we have exchanges that are quoted on the inside market constantly which provide a rebate to take liquidity. So per $ notional value of contract, exchange fees are less in futures than exchange+sec fees are in stocks. That's all I'm wondering, thanks for the detailed response.
Shreddog, I don't want to discuss my firm or our rates on here. My comments would be deleted anyway. In "general" I'm comparing a professional futures firm that scalps futures with a professional stock firm "Bright" that pushes a scalping strategy using ETF's. What I would like to hear from Don specifically is what edge they think they have using double and triple leveraged ETF's other then them making a killing on commissions since those products are horribly expensive to trade on top of the higher tax rates.
Don does not offer .0005 for stock rates. In fact, I don't know anyone that does. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but probably most on ET will not do the kind of volume that would ever get them that rate. Don's stock rates are .0030 and .0050.
To me the obvious advantage would be since the moves will be 2x or 3x as much there is a wider range to work with?
I would like to clarify on my post above because I did not mention that I still think the eminis are the better instrument for many reasons already mentioned in this thread just that the added range might be an advantage.