Kingfin2 is right.
I show some of my students that I can trade one contract using Trade Station (not the fastest fills) paying the full 5.00 per round turn on the YM and still make money.
On the other hand if the trading methodology is out of synch, paying 1.75 in commission will not help you.
Regarding bad fills, that is a function of what style you use. A retracement style where you put a limit order at projected resistance (such as Friday) would get you a better fill, but even in a down market there can be brutal retracements.
Most of our trades Friday were (re-break) trades, where you went market as soon as the trend reestablished itself.
It was kind of funny, but if you look at the tape of the room calls, there were more than a few times when some of our traders commented things like "damn it, bad fill."
Then 30 seconds later were surprised to see the market giving them a 20 point profit. The bad fills were caused because they timed the market just as a few hundred other traders were correctly guessing the reassertion of the trend.
Sometimes a bad fill means no heat on the trade.
Sorry for the detailed response, but there were some intelligent comments here. Most of the time I just wade in to a bunch of sad people content to just rip each other all the time---so I have to adjust the content of the response.
Successfully,
Alex L. Wasilewski
Co-Founder & Head Trader
Trades That Work
www.puretick.com
1-877-GOLONG1 (1-877-465-6641)