Hello fellow traders, i work at Title Trading and i use sterling pro. As you know if u work at title, your true net comes out next day because, they have to calculate the routing fees seperately. I put a rough estimate of the fee structure on the sterling pro to gauge my P/L throughout the day, So that i dont celebrate on my green P/L, when i am actually down. Recently i realize next day see the P/L something doesnt feel right. I should be up but i am down and it takes a long time to go through my every single trade. i dont want to doubt the firm's integrity but something doesnt feel right. i should be up but im not, or can i really tell if im up or down? i came from another firm recently that every trade(fees) are calculated on the spot and what you see is what you made Im just not happy with this, "wait a day until the surprise P/L" Is this just my Title branch or sterling pro problem that we cant add a routing fee calculation to the system so it reflects the THE TRUE F*CKING P/L? any ideas, opinions are very welcome, help me out here guys.
I'm on Sterling too. If you post your daily blotter after you're done for the day, and then post your final net p/l change the next morning, I'll let you know whether or not I see anything suspicious.
before i do that, here are some things i have done on sterling pro, and gotta explain these things. a long story but here me out. I came to Title trading 2 months ago, and I cant believe nobody raised this issue of latter P/L calculations until now. On my sterling, we have to manually put in fees and rebates for every key we use. But We only have passive fee settings to fill in, meaning we can only set fees on bidding and offering. For example, nyse bid 0, EdgeA offer 0 But if i punch the offer with nyse and some shares get routed, Fee will be 0 for that trade untill tomorrow's calculations. so i see this fantastic P/L at the end of the day. We cannot set the routing fee into executions right? So, i made adjustment on the fee settings; nyse bid 0.002 EdgeA 0.002 etc., that every trade i make im paying more fees(although it's free to bid and offer) to sort of even out the routing fees. It was alright for a week or so, my suprise P/L next day was always good suprise, my net was more than what i saw yesterday. And then bang again, $3000net day was turned to $23 next day, $-2000 became $-3200 next day. Some other traders experienced this too in different extent. My manager went through each trades(almost 200-500 trades) and he said "It was routed most of the time, that's why" Well how the f*ck do i know if i was routed? After 4years of trading, i know and feel when im up or down. Am i tripping? This doesnt happen everyday, but it does happen Before i post my P/L, can u sterling users tell me how u guys set up the fees to gauge your money or do you guys just leave it and trust your firm's calculations? Thank you and i really appreciate your feedback. i hope u guys understood what i wrote above. this is very confusing and annoying issue for me.
Well unless I'm mistaken, here's how much I have to pay every year in routing fees: $0.00. That's because my orders just stay wherever I put them. If I select NYSE, that's where my order goes- no where else. ARCA, NASDAQ, etc... Same deal. Maybe you'd be better off working it the same way. BTW, you <i>are</i> also factoring in the SEC fees, right?
What destination are you using? What kind of volume are you doing? I overcalculate my fees. I pretty much trade the same way everyday with the same results so I know fairly closely how well my shown net will match the net the next day based my volume. If you show me samples of your BOS statements I can take a look through.
To clear up any confusion, if I'm not mistaken (a very necessary disclaimer with this topic, because even after 12 years of trading I still know & care very little about these mundane technical details) there's an extra fee on top of commissions when your order is <b>RE-routed</b>, not when its initially routed to your chosen direct-access destination. So <b>of course</b> I route all my orders to a specific ECN. I said that I doubt I ever pay any extra routing fees because what I <b>don't</b> do is have the orders <b>re-routed</b>- I just momentarily cross or lock the market instead. At least that's how it looks in after-hours trading, which is the only time slow enough for me to closely watch level 2 for the entire process. However, it wouldn't surprise me much to learn that many of my (market order) ARCA orders are being re-routed to whatever ECN is showing a better price at the time. (Are they? Anyone happen to know?) I know this is all elementary school stuff... it just doesn't matter all that much with what I do, and I hate dealing with this kind of tedious shit.
In this case you'd have to enable your ARCA order to route. If it doesn't route and you cross the market a dime, you'll only hit the ARCA book and toss plenty of cash in the shitter in the process.
I don't trade with Title but I do use Sterling. You CAN set the ECN fees for removing liquidity and routing out. But you can't set different ECN fees for Tape A NYSE and Tape B Nasdaq stocks. I attached a picture of the way I set up my ECN fees.