if you've never traded with real money before, my advice would be to open a small account first.....like a 5k margin account with Ameritrade, Etrade, or Scottrade....and just trade some 100 share lots to learn how to place some orders, stops, and get the feel of how executions and routing works....then start trading 12,000+ share blocks.
My advise to you - go with cheaper option. If you strategy does not depend much on the commision cost it should not depend on all other factors either. If you are going to buy at market price than execution time is not a factor. Maybe even scottrade will do it for you.
surely I will be doing small orders (2000 - 3000 shares) in the first 1 - 2 months to get the feel of how executions and routing works and learn how to place orders but then I will do bigger. what I am doing is I am trying to pick a good brocker from the start, the one that can handle big lot orders with less problems than its competitors . It has to be a well known, big broker. As I can see it, there are two types of brokers Ameritrade-type (Scotttrade etc..) and IB type (Cyber, MB etc...) out of both types I like Ameri and Cyber. Now I gotta choose between em. the question is - what Cyber can do for me that the Ameritrade can't and vice versa?
By the way how did you do your papertrading? As fas as I know only IB offered papertrading just recently. No other broker has it.
allways appreciated people who could give straight answers related to the topic theme gkishot, jsmooth, thecalip, easy guru - thanx
I suggest you find a broker first that will allow you to do a demo trading. I believe IB has it. Because of the size of your orders it most likely will be broken up into smaller orders and each will be filled at different prices. Only this way you can be sure that the strategy you had developed is really working.
in a straight and dumb way - sitting infront of the monitor and saying to myself : 'bought here, sold there....'. and kept a register of all my trades in exell. but that's offtopic... let's not start it because many more people will want to come in and tell how dumb I am and how fast I will soon loose my money... All I ask for is a little help on the subject (maybe there are people who tried both of these brokers or tryied both of the types etc... and could give a hand with choosing between the two) may be some people could give some/list of criteria for which to look... I am big (in terms of capital) and if everything goes well in 3-4 yrs from now on I will expand. by much more. so I am interested in big order executions. I know Ameritrade-type brokers dont give direct access. Is direct access important when we talk about big orders (500000 and more shares)?
For retail: IB and Medved Quotetracker For leverage: GENESIS .................................................................. I have traded since 1978....and I think that this is a very simple decision...