There is no way in hell that TD Ameritrade is giving away CME real-time data on the ES. NONE. Somehow, even buried in fees - The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is getting paid.
AFAIU (and this is what I have been told by people who're supposed to know this, I have not seen any supporting documentation for it) once you get to a certain level of service (as in, big payments to the exchange every month) you no longer have to account for every client that is receiving data.
bone, I am not talking about individual traders. I am talking about the amounts TDA is paying to the exchanges for data.
Yes, brokers could add extra commissions and cover costs, but the issue is that non funded accounts are provided with no data costs? AFAIU/K if you are distributing just data you need to be registered as data providers like DTN, Esignal, etc. and then you charge your customer a fee per exchange that is nowhere near a fund account cost.
And I am telling you that if the CME ever found out that TDA was providing TDA clients with free real time CME ES futures data there would be hell to pay. Like a $73B market cap CME Group as petitioner lawsuit in Federal Court trouble.
CME doesn't need to find out because CME already knows. TDA pays bulk fees to the exchanges and doesn't have to account for every user they redistribute the data to. You may not believe it. Knowing the guy that told me, I think it's true. There is also no other way to explain how everyone and his brother has an unfunded account at TDA and is getting RT data in TOS. As the guy above showed you, with a chart.
TOS/TDA data is delayed unless you have a FUNDED account and have been approved in advance for futures/options margin.
What you saying is that the CME would put itself in a position where they discriminate between FCMS and charge certain FCM customers for data fees and others get away with quotes of an unfunded account? I work with quite a few FCMs and no unfunded account gets real-time data. This includes small and large FCMs. What if the person is a PRO? He can open the account, not fund, and not pay pro fees for the data? I'd love to meet your guy. Please have his people call my people.