what is the best way to trade spread at ib?

Interactive Brokers has a nice feature to allow you to enter the order for spread such as bull call/put. However, the commission is very high, often many times more than entering the leg individually. What is the best way to trade spread? Thanks.

 

I didn't notice that the commission is different for multi-leg orders vs trading each leg individually. I mean the commission is the same when you trade 2 legs individually, or together as a combo. Why do you think it is different?

 

The commission is meant to be lower when using combos

 

I don't think IB rebates you if you supply liquidity on spreads. I was getting hit for 6 bucks per fly vs a flat 2.40 at TOS .

With that said, the reduction in commish comes at a price.

 

I'm just looking at my commissions for today, and:
Single leg: between $0.73 and $1.09
3-option combo: $1.53 total commission ($0.51 per option)
4-option combo: between $2.1 to $2.56 total commission ($0.53 - $0.64 per option)
5-option combo: between $0.55 & $1.84 total commission ($0.11 - $0.37 per option)
6-option combo: $2.54 total commission ($0.42 per option)

Each combo may have different number of legs, for example a 3-leg combo may have 5 options in it.
Either way, neither the number of legs or options matters, it's just all over the place, but averaged across many orders should come to less than $0.75 per option.
Doesn't matter if traded as a single leg or as a combo.

 

I trade QQQ bull calls spread. The recent three trades commissions are 29.37, 54.09, and 35.86. 25 contracts each trade. So, average commssion is (29.37+54.09+35.86)/3/(25*2)=0.79.
Single leg commission is usually below 0.4 as i use Prefer Rebate under Smart routing.
Therefore, the combo commission is significantly higher.

 

are those numbers all in or plus clearing fees?

 

Then your original question or description was incorrect because you didn't mention rebates.
Now it looks like your question is not even related to commissions, but to rebates.
It's always best to provide specific examples vs throwing up some theoretical statements and make everyone else guess what you're looking at and look for examples that you didn't bother to provide.

 

Sorry I didn't say it clearly in the first place. My purpose is to reduce the commission of the combo trade, possibly to use comission rebate. Is there a way to do that?