$226 a month? Is that real money or just papertrading money? I'd be wanting breakfast in the morning as well for that much! With Interactive Brokers I can get all the data I need which is free if you make just a few trades every month. I use Medved Quotetracker for charting which is free and works a lot better than some paid for charting programs. The real time simulator that I made is just working off the first level for the bid and ask prices. However when I start to trade for real money I'd be crazy to trade 1000 shares at a time until I can prove that my system is profitible. I'll be happy to begin with 100 shares or 1 emini contract at a time.
I was just wondering who from FFastTrade hounded you? I am the COO of FFastTrade and I am sure that my Sales people do not Hound people. We offer a free trial to show people the functionality of our system. We then follow that up by seeing if those trial users are interested in the Lowest Execution rates in the industry. With our System Charge included, we still offer better value than my competitors, especially for Traders that trade over 375 round trips a month. If you don't fall into that category, then fine you should pay the higher transaction cost. Most of our traders are former IB and Pats users that were looking for a faster system and lower transaction fees. This is the message that I want my sales people to deliver. That's it! In addition, we make it pretty clear that our trainer is designed to act as our Beta System. We add New functionality to it before it goes into production so that our Trainers can give us feedback. We also make changes to our Trainer more liberally so that we can find out if a change is worthwhile. For that reason, you may have experienced some Bugs in FFastTrainer. Using the word Hound when describing my Sales guys is ridiculous. They ask a simple question: Does $3.32 a round Trip work for you or doesn't it?? I would hope most people would appreciate the info.
Yes, thats $226 of real money. Firstly I don't see how you could be getting a real data feed for free when there are exchange fees for everything, most importantly $60 per month for a full CME feed that you would need to see the futures market in real time. $10 per month usually for level II and a few bucks more to have real time feeds from OPRA and the various other exchanges. All of the above are exchange fees, not software fees. Secondly, if you were interested in trading stocks for a living, you really have to get used to at LEAST 1000 share position size immediately. Do the math. The game is won in reducing commissions and slippage. Average commissions are around $13.50 per trip to buy and sell stocks. So thats $27.00 per turn to do one trade. At 100 shares, you realize that the trade has to go in your favor by .27 cents before you start to break even? .27 is a base hit in daytrading. A solid winner. You could trade 100 shares all month long and be in the black on your P/L in terms of points and lose literally thousands of dollars in commissions during that month. Just 5 trades (and anyone will tell you that is VERY few) a day will cost you $135. There are 20 trading days in any given month. You're looking at close to $3 grand. I say trade the size that you think you will trade when it becomes real money, and make sure that the simulated environment that you are playing on takes all commission and slippage into account.
I don't want to argue what you're saying, I 'd rather help which is what I would hope this board is all about. For $1.00 I can trade 100 shares with Interactive Brokers. Here's a handy site for comparisons: http://www.newsearching.com/nft/brokers.shtml As soon as I find I can make money I'll gladly follow your recommendation and trade 1000 shares rather than 100 shares. The data feed from Interactive Brokers covers all the stock, commodity and options markets in the US. It's $10 a month or free if you have more than $30 that month in commisions. It has level 2 for commodoties but not for stocks. Even though it's free, Medved Quotetracker is rated pretty good. Five fives out of five on this board: http://www.elitetrader.com/so/?action=view&SR_ProductID=33
Riskless, Yes you are correct, your salesperson didn't hound me. He was very friendly and not pushy at all. I never realized that your comissions were so competitive, I was only interested in your simulator at the time. I'll have to compare your rates with what I'm paying at IB. I still like the free simulator from "almostatrader" better than yours though. It has fewer features than yours but it's much more reliable. Why don't you get it from "almostatrader" and have a look at it.
Thanks for clarifying that! I don't like to be hounded, so I don't ask my salespeople to hound prospects. We use our simulator to give prospective clients and newcomers chance to test drive our system and see how the market actually trades. This serves 3 purposes: 1. To let new Traders get some experience in real-time, where they actually trade against the actual Depth of market with FFastTrainer's Smart logic matching. 2. To give prospects a chance to see our system, test their Internet connection, and see if the performance of their computer is compatible with our Live trading. 3. To act as our Beta test for new functionality and features. We currently have Hundreds of people using our Trainer through the CBOT's MinidDOW promotion, FutureSource's education site, and our own website: www.ffasttrader.com. This gives us a very good feel for what people want, but it does have occasional hiccups because it is a test vehicle. I truly appreciate the fact that you clarified what you said, because I was very concerned and I addressed it with my Sales guys. Have a great Holiday Season.