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Part of the requirements of the PATRIOT anti-terrorism law is for brokers to "know their customer", which means that they can require reasonable identification. Here's a link to some info at NASD regulation: http://www.nasdr.com/money.asp

Technically, both can be beat. However, beating one will land you in jail, while beating the other will land you on the sidewalk or at "any game other than blackjack". :)

Unfortunately, IB doesn't handle fungible contracts well. Intraday, you will find that your account equity may vary widely, because it values the two "sides" of your flat position differently, based on the current bid/ask and or last price of each market. If one or both of the contracts are...

After hearing the great news last night, I waited for Instinet to open at 03:00 EDT (Thursday), and was able to successfully enter an order to buy 4x my cash balance in stock. Just tried it again, too, and it's still true :-) I'm guessing it'll be in a communique with some other things...

That's still a great deal. For a $50K account: 15/day * ~60 days/quarter = ~900 trades/quarter Assuming 1000 share trades at IB at $7.50 = $6750 commish $50K * 1.5% = $750 at ML/MWD/whoever $6000 savings per quarter - more if you are trading size. Sounds like a good deal for swing...

Merrill Lynch made headlines with this Unlimited Advantage program a couple of years ago: http://askmerrill.ml.com/product_details/1,2270,20372,00.html Of course, they won't come out and tell you what the volume limitations are, or even whether that percentage is per-year or per-quarter...

TAL (www.taltrade.com) offers an API for RealTick too.

That could explain why someone was having problems with account balances, positions, etc. (I don't know if this is a recurring problem at PD or not). A couple years ago, I traded with a broker that cleared through SWS. There were constant problems of this type, and it was ultimately the reason I...

Can you give an example of where "biggest size first" occurs? As far as I can tell, this applies only for the very narrow case of trading between 151 and 500 shares of a NASDAQ stock via Island, which results in a net commission of $0.0095 per share instead of IB's $0.01 - a worst-case...

I disagree. I've seen management take some of the input and make changes as a result, particularly with respect to customer service issues. On other issues, even though there is a disagreement, we are at least getting some discussion going, which is far better than the previous silence.

In case you hadn't thought of it, I'll point out that this is something that can be done via the API.

IB (www.interactivebrokers.com) fits your requirements: - Daytrading "margin" is 50% of normal SPAN requirements during pit hours ($1969/$1575 for ES). - $2.40/contract commish beats everyone, AFAIK - While there is a $2000 initial account minimum, you need that much to open a single ES...

Why/how are pro NYSE quotes only $1/month via RealTick?

I disagree with those that argue "it's only $100 - get a life". The absolute dollar value of the problem is really irrelevant - it's the way it's being dealt with. At what point does it become significant? That's relative to each person's account size, profitability, tolerance for loss, etc...

When there are a large number of orders hanging, the help desk is reluctant to call the ECN or exchange and run them down simply because they're overwhelmed. In these situations, you don't have to be foul (it doesn't help at all), but you do have to be forceful to get them to call, simply...

This seems to work well, but I wonder why. You'd think that, if the spec marked the order "hold" because he was going to execute it shortly, he wouldn't let you change the price either, since that could effectively be the same thing as cancelling it. I wonder if IB/NYSE is allowing changes to...

One of the prices is not a valid price for the instrument you are buying/selling. U.S. options, for example, are priced in 0.05, 0.10 increments. Trying to use a price of 3.01 for an option will yield this message. Same goes for a price of 10.005 for a stock, 1166.123 for an ES contract, etc...

I disagree. The primary insecurity in emails would seem to be the fact that they sit on your ISP's mail server until you poll for them. During that time, they can be read by someone who hacks your mail account, hacks the ISP, an unscrupulous person at the ISP, etc. They may also appear on...

I process my statements against my execution reports daily, in a semi-automated fashion. It is not simply enough to look at the exec reports. The statements are generated by the clearing process (i.e. the back office) at IB, and may contain things that are not in the exec reports, like trades...

There are other inconsistencies too. Sometimes, BEST will show what appears to be the last trade, but the last trade shown for the ECN routes will show the NYSE close. Or maybe it's the reverse of that. I can't keep it straight. I spend a lot of time punching symbols into my quote program...