commissions as % of profit

[Copernicus]

Quote from Epsilon:

Jesus people, how much are you paying. I am currently paying 0.0015

It's about 10% or less

damn, do u self clear ?

 

[Epsilon]

no - i got that rate at my firm. They are self clearing tho

 

[neutrosphere]

That rate is barbaric... Anyways its unusual but interesting how Noise calculates his profits based on how mcuh commissions he pays.. Has a total business mentiality. Might try it! This is in reality your own business and eveyrthing is just an expense that needs to be paid before you make profits. Anyways would like to keep that 50 % or higher~~

 

[SitrusTrader]

Quote from neutrosphere:

That rate is barbaric... Anyways its unusual but interesting how Noise calculates his profits based on how mcuh commissions he pays.. Has a total business mentiality. Might try it! This is in reality your own business and eveyrthing is just an expense that needs to be paid before you make profits. Anyways would like to keep that 50 % or higher~~

which rate?

 

[MR.NBBO]

Yeah.....All I gotta do is trade 100k share lots at ameritrade......and I'll have non-exisitant commisions too!

Other option is to sell the stock I bought in 1980 for a 250k profit & say I'm a trader!

Take these super low comish. numbers with a grain of salt. The two examples above show the extremes.

 

[Ace_Rothstein]

what firm is offering .015? Or are you part of a group that does volume?

 

[Epsilon]

Quote from Ace_Rothstein:

what firm is offering .015? Or are you part of a group that does volume?

Which firm - I don't want to post here so that I wont get hammered as an advertiser. If you are really interested you can PM me.

I am a part of the group, however the rate they give is in that vicinity directly anyway, they actually start their traders off with an even lower rate.

 

[wanderer]

Good thread. Would pro traders on ET please update this thread with current info ?

I'm a retail daytrader and commissions/statutories work out to 30-40% of my Gross Profit.

Quote from lescor:

Day trading account, 30-50%. Long term trading account, about 3%.

The only thing that matters though is the bottom line. A high volume strategy will be commission intensive, but give you lots and lots of opportunities to apply your edge and might net you a lot more than than infrequent trading with virtually no commissions.

 

[Ticketwatcher]

I do not concern myself much with commissions these days. I started out trading in the early nineties. Brown & Co was a so called deep discount broker charging 29.00 one way for up to 5000 shares. And at the time I thought that was cheap considering what I had been paying at Waterhouse. I was trading in nothing less than two thousand share lots and looking for 1/4 profit which before decimalization was only two ticks. Somedays I made daytrades and some days I did not, I was not trading for a living at that time. My point is that I made good money when commissions were 29 a trade and for the trades that I was looking to make my trading costs were a little more than 10 per cent. Today, I trade in a minimum of 1000 share lots and look to trade for 10 to 15 cents. I pay a flat 3 dollars for up to 5000 shares. I look at it this way, that on a thousand share trade, my cost is one penny although it is actually less. I make a lot of what I would call defensive or lateral trades that are for less than 10 cents. But I also make quite a few trades of more than just 1000 shares. I am fairly certain that my trading costs are closer to 5% than 10%.