Borderline self awareness. PFOF is anti-competitive. Zero commissions should be achievable without taking paychecks from Citadel. Charge a nice fee for better data, faster execution (as in, better pipes to the market), etc. But taking payment from market makers ruins price discovery, and its hilarious to think people worship Madoff's greatest ponzi scheme. Seems to be popular among armchair economists. Brokers have so many avenues for profit PFOF should be criminal.
With penny spreads people are still grumbling. I am getting fills within the penny spread. "Brokers have so many avenues for profit PFOF should be criminal.[" Citadel is a very efficient middle man which benefits everybody.
It has definitely changed for the better for me in terms of size. Before I was mainly trading futures and the occasional equities. With zero commission, I now feel comfortable swing 5K, 10K , 20K shares for pennies move. And it makes economic sense. Meaning I'm actually net net positive even for pennies move on size. Before, I thought that is not a viable strategy due to the high commission structure and I thought it was silly. But now I realize you can make a pretty decent money with size and small pennies moves. In fact, this is a very stable way to trade. At least for me it is. So far in Oct, I'm positive almost every single day except today. I was chasing this small stock with size and got whipped. Gotta be careful next time.
Beware the per-contract fee on options trades at most brokers. 65 cents per contract on a 200 contract iron condor (50 contracts on each of four legs) comes to $130. There is a 5% cap at Fidelity, but at Robinhood there are no fees per contract. I believe that TradeZero America also has no fees per contract.
I've been searching for more info on getting the lowest possible commissions/fees for trading SPX options. Currently I'm at TOS, paying $0.65. They don't tack on the additional exchange fee for SPX options. When I asked them to go lower than the $0.65 they told me that they could, but would then hit me with the $0.40-$0.50 / contract (can't remember the exact $) exchange fee coming from the CBOE. (As an aside, does that mean that TOS is paying that fee on my behalf to the CBOE, or are they able to eliminate or lower it?) I notice Firstrade advertises $0 + $0.00/contract options trading. I emailed them, and then called them, both times they claimed that they don't pass on the exchange fee for SPX options, but don't feel super confident that the people I dealt with know what they are talking about. They claim that the only fee / contract is the ORF at $0.0381. Sounds too good to be true, anybody know this to be correct even w/ index options??
The CBOE charges between .45 and .65 for SPX (depending on the price of the option and whether it is in the monthly or weekly. SPX monthly above 1 is the most expensive. http://www.cboe.com/framed/pdfframe...section=SEC_RESOURCES&title=CBOE Fee Schedule From what I have heard, most of the brokers pass on this fee, unlike TOS. It is possible they may even lose money on these orders, considering they also have to pay a small OCC fee as well that is not passed on. The .65 rate is very cheap when it includes this fee. I very much doubt that First Trade can give a 0 rate and not pass on this fee. If they do please post here.
VIX options as well. IB is the only retail broker that I know that allows access during the full session.