Either you have been brainwashed by prop firms that make you pay too much or you are a firm owner brainwashing people to pay too much.
I'm all for cheaper rates, but .0015 for a puny 2 million shares per month is just not realistic for a firm that has top quality equipment, support, and services. That's a paltry $3000 in commissions for the firm. Even if you had 50 guys doing that, it's still only 100 million shares and $150,000 a month in commissions. Maybe a bucket shop in Alabama using dial up and trading on Commodore 64's could profit, but that wouldn't cut it in NYC. It would barely cover the rent, salaries, and bills, leaving nothing for the firm to actually turn a profit (not to mention continuously upgrading the system). No way could that firm be offering a fast stable platform with top quality servers, computers, support, etc. Not to mention news services (Bloomberg is almost 2k per month alone, Reuters, Dow Jones, etc.), charting software, short list, etc. Newbies and low volume guys can keep their .0015 rate and lose out when their systems crash on the slightest volume surges. The extra 2-3k they "saved" in commission would be more than made up in one missed trade. I'll take a good rate (.003 or lower), with 100% payout, top of the line hardware, fast and stable platform, multiple news services, and in house tech support over that cutthroat rate. In the long run, missed opportunities and lost money due to outages will far outweigh the cheaper commission.
Interesting thread. The thing I really wonder about is CLEARING costs. I seem to get conflicting answers about how much it really costs to clear trades. I've heard from some B/D's that it's based partly on the number of different securities you trade in a given day, and others say that that's irrelevant but rather it depends only on the number of shares, etc. Anyone here know what it's really a function of? I have often wondered about the extremely cheap places and how they swing it. I think that Efficient Executions clears through Terra Nova, which is itself a penny stock and that makes me a bit nervous. Based on Yahoo, they do seem to have quite a bit of cash on hand, though: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=TNFG.OB Their advertised prices seem very low, and that could make some strategies that would otherwise fail. Anyone here know what a GS-cleared account goes for, per share, say for 10 million shares/month? I ask about this because this might be considered the "top end", as far as pricing is concerned.
So far I have "retail" rates quoted at .005 and .006 per share through Assent and Lightspeed. This is trading remote with occasional in office trading if you prefer.
TraderD72, Who quoted you .006 per share at Lightspeed? Their website says .00395 per share. How many shares a month do you trade? If you are trading less than 100k shares a month then maybe Lightspeed charges more for those accounts but I don't think that is the case.
Lightspeed was the .005/share rate. I am aware that their website states .0395 so I am figuring it may be just this office that is adding a bit to that amount for some reason.