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VXX volume is up today, 8 million, around 2x yesterday's volume. Maybe someone is hedging a VXX position with those options. (VXX isn't optionable).

The March VIX futures have been in the 23.50 - 24 range today.

Just to be clear, you're saying that with your old broker, when you placed an order at the midpoint you'd get filled immediately, but with IB your order does not get filled and becomes the new NBBO? Is there a particular exchange that the order is usually getting parked at?

Are you talking about placing trades on the price of the VIX itself, or are you placing trades on some broader market index?

One set expires March 20, the other expires March 31. If only there were a way to express the expiration date in the option symbol...

I can't imagine a scenario where the broad market would drop so low that there are no bidders. Individual stocks, maybe. But even Enron, AIG, Refco gapped down 80 to 90%, not 100%. It's rare that a company will be revealed to be totally worthless, and even then, people were even buying the...

Can you detail some of the constitutional arguments? Are they arguing that the section 31 SEC fee is also unconstitutional?

I traded some VIX options last week and this week. Late last week there was some action, but this week with the nearby VIX futures being range bound within a 1 or 2 point band and the ATM options having a bid-ask spread of .25 to .35, it's been like watching paint dry. Paint with a time decay...

What I'm curious about is why you didn't start to sell them sooner or at least sell some further out strike to make a vertical spread that would mostly lock in your gains. I missed out on profiting from Friday afternoon's slide because I had closed out half my puts (which I'd bought on Tuesday)...

Prior to the recent few days of heightened volatility, VIX call options would often fall to the day's lows just before the close of trading at 16:15. SPY, QQQQ, and DIA options trade until 16:15 too, but the spreads widen after 16:00.

The ES spread is .25 while the SP spread is .1, so possibly there is some correlation between the SP quote and the percentage of ES trades occurring just above and below that, for example with SP at 1115.1x1115.2 and ES at 1115.0x1115.25, you'd likely see more ES trades at 1115.25 than at 1115.0.

If you don't get the answer here, you may want to try the TWSAPI group, http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TWSAPI/ . According to http://www.interactivebrokers.com/php/apiUsersGuide/apiguide/api/historical_data_limitations.htm , historical data requests can go back 1 year.

BTW, the current section 31 assessment on stock sell transactions is .00257%. You futures traders don't see this, of course (you're assessed just $.0042 per round trip, and your broker probably covers this as part of the commission). I wonder if they could just quietly increase this by a factor...

Since one of the justifications for this tax is to moderate speculation in commodities, especially oil, it's kind of odd that futures have much less of a tax than stocks. It's almost like they're encouraging institutions who hold GLD and USO, for example, to switch to futures.

Shared lines are going to have increased latency compared to, say, a dedicated T1. Also note that light travels just 186 miles in a millisecond, and nothing travels faster than light. If every millisecond really counts for you and you want to remain in California, rent a computer colocated...

No, it's not a per-transaction credit. The likely implementation is that you get taxed on all transactions that are not mutual funds and not in a tax-advantaged account, but then you get a single credit of up to $250 at the end of the year.

I think customer service is sometimes a necessity. Dealing with a stuck order isn't something you can do yourself. Here's what happened to me last year. A sell order got stuck - the platform indicated it wasn't acked by the exchange. I called customer service, waited on hold for a half hour...

I don't know why people need to make personal accusations, but... I've been actively trading for 10 years, and would not appreciate a trader tax, especially one of this magnitude.

Other countries currently cooperate, even Switzerland. Witness the recent UBS suit/settlement. The US govt will undoubtedly find out who has foreign accounts.

This has been discussed at length elsewhere here, but yes, though there are exemptions (mutual funds, trading done in an IRA or 401(k), pension funds, and the first $100K of everything else will be tax-free), the goal is to skim some off the top of speculative traders who don't do anything...