.015 sounds like a rate from 1999. ti costs like $20/month, i would be willing to bet that everyone here pays 1/2 to 1/3 that rate, but who cares right?
You are correct but I do that on purpose. I have things soft dollared to me. My Trade-Ideas is paid for, my briefing is paid for, If I want new monitors I get them for free. Phose system also free. Anything having to do with trading I get for free. So it is not as bad as it may look. It is my personal opinion that people go crazy over commissions. I have friends who trade that think if they can just get a few thens less it would be the equivalent of getting that money back at the end. It never happens. I have learned from experience that commission just makes no difference as long as you know what you are doing. At least that is how it is to me. I like knowing I do really well paying sometimes twice as much as others.
To each his own, I felt completely ripped off paying that rate when everyone was offering $5 to trade up to 5,000 shares, i knew something was wrong with my rate.
I'm sure you've already done the math, and your soft dollar stuff must be worth it. However, depending on your volume, you could be hugely overpaying. For a trader doing 200k shares per day, the difference between 1.5 cents per share versus 0.3 cents per share would be worth over $50,000 per month in commission savings. Personally, I do over 400k shares per day, and pay less than 0.3 cps, so my commission savings would be well over $100,000 per month (not peanuts, for me). If you haven't already, you might want to calculate the approximate monthly value of your soft dollar benefits to ensure that the higher rates are still making sense for you in light of the cheaper alternatives now available. Please don't take this the wrong way. I have found you thread(s) to be interesting and I hope you continue with them. You likely have already done a careful analysis of your commission costs/benefits, and if so, please ignore this. However, for very active traders, commission costs can be huge, and seemingly 'small' savings can add up very quickly. For those trading with longer time frames (less frequent turnover = lower total volume), this may not be such a significant expense. Best of luck, -Eric
He has an all-in rate that includes additional software. It also seems that he does not trade much volume and prefers to take positions.
I didn't really participate in the afternoon rally. Mostly twiddled my thumbs for the afternoon. My two swing positions did benefit from it though.
Today I was giving a click in over trading. I went from up a little over a G to down a little over a G to where I ended up. But at the end of the day I have to say it was a whole lot of fun. Les thanks for contributing again. One of the things I hope that happens as a result of this thread is that we all maybe do a little better knowing people are watching.
I was short IIF from the open(30.45), covered it at 29.74 after the ES rally started. Market went up another 8 handles, the specialist's closing print of the stock was at 29.30 7K shares. Very bizarre action after this major ES rally, but it was also interesting to be short a stock from the high print of the day and that stock closes on the low of the day after this upmove... Looks like I picked the best short of the day) Very funny... Probably it will be a great O/N Long from the closing print... Anyway...
Maybe if you show some of your trades and your reasoning behind it. Otherwise you doing so well only frustrates others and breeds jealousy. I'm still not clear what your style is. You aren't a scalper, that much is obvious.
Ha, that's nothing. Besides getting squeezed in that ES rip I thought the most amusing thing was watching WDC break through major resistance at 14.00 and into a 52 week high. Of course the futures rip brought out a lot of sellers as well as masses of daytraders trying to go long with the futures. As a result, something that could have been a great move turned into a churning penny battle. Stock did close on a new 52 week high, but not before chopping as many as he could. Damn futures.