what you perceive as rudeness is many times anger with people who are too lazy to do any work finding answers to their questions. some people refuse to use the search button whether the search button is on this site or on some other site. you also have people who can't read like the poster on refco on this thread.
you "graduated" from Ameritrade? I thought that meant a move down! Commissionwise, I find it cheaper to trade at Ameritrade based on my size than IB. When my account size was sub-5K, I found IB ideal because of the cheap commission when you are trading 100 or 200 shares. But immediately the account grows and you are trading 8000 shares apiece, the IB commissions quickly add up far above the $9.99 at Ameritrade, plus other things like Option order cancellation fees. I still use both though: Ameritrade for my account, and IB for my wife's smaller account.
Hello Neke. What I meant was that I had moved on to things that were a little more advanced for which ameritrade is unable to service. Futures and options on futures are not able to be executed by ameritrade although I hear from Apex that may be changing soon down the road. Additionally, more advanced option positions such as diagonal spread may be executed as one trade. To do a diagonal spread on ameritrade you must leg into it unfortunately. However, commisionwise you're right.
So IB's commission rates on options is WORSE than Ameritrades???? Hmmm. Damn that 3rd grade education... And yes, as long as ameritrade isnt trading futures & futures options, what good are they besides stocks. If you want better stock rates and a real platform and WAAAY better option rates than Ameritrade, go to TOS... They will beat Ameritrades rates hands down.... And the options calcs are awesome. I wasnt much of an options guy, but since I joined TOS.. well things change. LOL.