Are there any brokers offering $1m+ financing for margin rates lower than IB?

[tonyf]

Interactive Brokers generally does not negotiate...they use "Wal Mart" type pricing (i.e. everyday low price). However, TD Ameritrade, E*TRADE, Fidelity and Schwab will negotiate if you can hit minimum asset levels and share volume targets. There are some people who don't pay any commissions on E*TRADE or TD Ameritrade, although I'm sure they pay more than zero for margin interest.

Would you know if E*Trade or TD sell order books to HFTs? That is something we debated briefly on my previous post

 

[tonyf]

Almost anything is negotiable if you are real size but think about their profitability. There needs to be something left profitable or there is no point in hosting your account. Trade for free and the broker probably want a few million on file for stock loan margin spread or rebates payment.
Negotiate down the margin rate and now all you have left is stock loan and rebates. Put yourself in their shoes. A lot will also depend on the makeup of your portfolio and how much leverage you want. If you are real size with plenty of assets you and your broker is bank margin rates can get really cheap. Leave them nothing and most will tell you to walk or create trial rates so they can analyze your activity.

This is what I am trying to figure out - computing the total profitability of ones account seems to be a dark art. What is considered "real size" in the market these days?

 

[Times]

You sure can - borrow and withdraw. Algo will liquidate your holdings though in the case of a margin call.

please excuse my ignorance but how do you "borrow and withdraw"?

As I thought it only auto borrows when you buy/short stock. I am unaware of a way to borrow without buying/shorting stock

 

[drm7]

Would you know if E*Trade or TD sell order books to HFTs? That is something we debated briefly on my previous post

They absolutely sell order flow on regular retail clients. I'm not sure about their active traders though. Usually the advanced platforms can customize routing, exchanges, etc. IB does NOT sell order flow.

 

[Sig]

please excuse my ignorance but how do you "borrow and withdraw"?

As I thought it only auto borrows when you buy/short stock. I am unaware of a way to borrow without buying/shorting stock

It's a bit of a semantics thing. Imagine you have $100,000. You want to buy $100,000 of IBM stock and put down $50,000 as a downpayment on a home. There are a couple of paths to accomplish this, both of which have exactly the same end result.
1. You put $50K in a brokerage account, but $100K worth of IBM on margin, and put your other $50K into your house transaction.
2. You put $100K in your brokerage account, buy $100K worth of IBM, then "withdraw" $50K from your brokerage account, which effectively margins your brokerage account the same as option 1, and then put the $50K into your house transaction.

Given that option 2 is functionally equivalent to option 1, it may be a bit confusing to call it "borrowing and withdrawing" even though that is an accurate description of what's going on, it's really just increasing the amount of margin in use on your account.

 

[tonyf]

please excuse my ignorance but how do you "borrow and withdraw"?

As I thought it only auto borrows when you buy/short stock. I am unaware of a way to borrow without buying/shorting stock

With IB you can buy cash currencies - I hold quite the Euro and GBP on borrow by way of example.