Quote from BlueStreek:
why don't you present proof that they are double charging on exchange fees? they don't make any money off exchanges fees. your insinuations are just that without any proof.
1. considering IB states what the fees are for each exchange, you can easily go to that exchanges website and compare. (you may also want to factor in redundant data lines, redistribution fees, non-display data fees, annual data audits, etc). Do some simple math and you'll see how a firm needs to cover these costs if offering access to over 100 market venues with a client base of active traders exceeding 200K.
2. You talk about commissions per year but somehow I suspect you are not subtracting exchange fees. Exchange fees on CME and ICE are over $1 per side. (brokers earn less than 1/2 of the exchanges for the privilege to pay for all the regulatory, data, programming and more to a demanding clientele who want it all for free or near cost).
So please show me the fees that IB are raising other than those where exchanges are raising fees. Your beef should be with the exchanges that are starting to charge or keep raising data fees.
Given your posts, I'd urge you to head to an exchange website and dig in deep into the fee structures including data redistribution, non-display data, different tiered data (yep you can pay more for faster data which I think is grossly unfair on some exchanges), telco costs, API costs, pro vis non-pro fees, the various definitions of pro/non-pro around the world, etc. etc etc. You may learn a thing or two and while I know many would like a free lunch, after you do the numbers, you might understand why we choose not to eat all the costs.