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One broker I used would never route to BOX - wouldn't even show BOX on the level II display until a couple months after they opened . I traded thousands of SPY contracts, back when the tick size was .05 and the typical spread was .10, and never ever got price improvement. With brokers like IB, I...

My experience at Ameritrade, confirmed by calling a rep: for each option series, they will route your order to a predetermined exchange. It may have the best price, it may not. It may execute your order anyway, or the order may just sit there, even if another exchange has a matching order at...

They've reported earnings, and the share lockup expired this week. Unless some negative news about how their mine is progressing comes out, I don't see it going below the upper 50's. Its current sawtooth pattern is pretty good for trading ATM June options. Be aware that unlike most stocks, IV...

See this thread http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=216158 fir a discussion of low option commission brokers.

Did futures traders who used Refco lose any portion of their accounts?

You can also trade options in an IRA cash account. No PDT rule to worry about, but you have to wait a day or two for a closing trade to clear before you can use its proceeds.

I've been long and short simultaneously a couple times when I accidentally clicked on "short" rather than "sell" to close out a long position. It was like that for a couple days, until I noticed. Easily fixed - called the broker and they flattened the position.

If the bid is 0, it's possible you won't be able to sell. This is more likely when the option is about to expire worthless or almost worthless. The nightmare scenario is described in http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51251 . All brokers ought to let you opt to not exercise...

How much are they going to invest in oil?. Trading a fund where you know they're going to be buying and selling millions of dollars worth of 2 specific oil contracts on a specific day might be interesting.

Sounds like they beat revenue handily. Will look to see where their expenses exceeded estimates, but I suspect the stock will soar tomorrow.

Hmm. If PDT rules do apply to IRA cash-style accounts - and I'm not sure why they would, given that the NASD PDT rules were concerned with customers having an adequate margin cushion - they're not being enforced. After I opened my cash account at IB with ~ $10K, I regularly traded more than 4...

Good grief. Put your cash into SPY. You'll make your 4% in 2 weeks.

The one disadvantage is that for IRA margin-type accounts, IB says they will implement PDT rules. That's a biggie for me as my account is a little over $30k and a bad day can conceivably bring it under $25k, and then I can't open new positions until it gets above $25k again (or 90 days). Since...

Correction to previous: http://ibkb.interactivebrokers.com/node/188 says an IRA cash-type account can open option spreads if "exercise style is European and long leg expires simultaneously or after short leg". I was trying to open option spreads in American-style options. IRTE. It also says IRA...

That happened with me, too. Took months and about 5 requests to get someone at IB to send me the form to fill out to change me to non-PDT status so I could continue trading. But as others have pointed out, IB may not want to spend much time on small accounts. The PDT rules allow the broker...

I have an IRA with IB. I did not make it an "IRA margin account", because I have less than $25K in it and I daytrade enough (albeit only a few hundred dollars at a time) that I would be deemed a PDT. I can't open spreads and can't trade futures - perhaps the "IRA margin account" is required for...

Another cool feature of shorting that I've read about: a large investor who wants to influence a company without any risk can buy and short the same (large) number of shares. This gives them enormous voting influence to, for example, put in the board members they want, with zero risk.

Anyone contemplating doing this needs to be aware of wash sale rules and IRS Revenue Ruling 2008-5.

I got connected to India one time when I called Dell sales around 8pm US/eastern. I wanted to buy an Ethernet switch. The agent could not get me a quote - connection to the US was timing out. So he transferred me to a US agent, someone with a Texas accent. She got a bit further (I still couldn't...

Is there a setting in TWS to turn off quotes? I can't get quotes anyway, because the firewall blocks port 4000, but I'd like to be able to get live quotes on my paper trading account using my iPhone (3G is plenty fast enough for quotes and charts, but I'd rather use TWS than the phone's iTWS to...