Which broker offers the cheapest options commissions currently for option trades.
Cheapest brokers for options
- Thread starter alexandercho
- Start date
+1
Thats who I use. Unless you are very small and investing only a few hundred dollars at a time, or only buying options on multi hundred dollar stocks like google, then options house is the way to go. Its flat rate fee is the best. The fifty cents a contract or whatever you pay at some other brokers really can add up.
The Peak6 relationship was actually recently addressed on another website/forum, see the link.
http://www.theoptionsinsider.com/forum/posts.asp?id=285
They don't allow order routing which used to bother me, but lately I've been getting sent to CBOE primarily so I'm happy.
This goes back to the whole thing of payment for order flow. If the customer was passed through the PFOF instead of the broker, watch how fast most of these schemes would implode. Although in this case it is a double whammy since it is extremely lucrative for Peak6 (or any other broker/MM combination like Timber Hill/Interactive Brokers or Citadel/Etrade) to match orders internally against their market making operation. People say how bad it was to repeal Glass-Steagall Act that seperated banking from invesment banking. This malignant relationship between brokers/market makers/exchanges is even worse imo.
It is amazing to me that the SEC (or soon SEC + CFTC) allows this internalization of order flow just because it is euphemized under the guise that they wll give you the NBBO or better when they match it internally. This is more of the same crap that orders are not exposed to the market place. It is in essence a dark pool, with only one member.