Ameritrade follows Schwab. Eliminates commissions

[qlai]

How do you figure? How does this stop DMA and execution quality? The hardware has paid for itself many times over and they’re still taking PFOF and other fees.

How can DMA broker, which implies that they mostly don't ingage in PFOF, can complete with zero commission? Only on execution quality (latency, reliability, venues, order types). That is a niche business that is more expensive than sending orders to HFT. So they will either go out of business or raise rates. Or maybe to get execution quality, traders will be forced to join prop firms. So, to me, acceptance of zero commission is equivalent to acceptance of PFOF practice (not being able to interact with exchanges directly - like CFDs).

If an active trader (read day trader in futures) needs higher quality execution and DMA there are far better, less advertised, more bespoke brokerage and execution firms.

There's no way to reduce commissions with Futures other than volume and membership. With equities DMA, you can actually get paid for trading via rebates or at least significantly reduce commissions.

 

[Magna]

There are 3 threads in this forum with essentially the same topic (TD Ameritrade eliminating commissions), so going forward let's post to this one which is the largest of the three. Thanks.