The route you select depends on market conditions & the type of order you have. For an immediate fill on 1000 shares or less (limit order) , if ISLD is available , I would go to ISLD. If you have NYSE NX(NYSE Direct), you will get fills on 1099 shares or less in three seonds or less and have the possibility of price improvement on your orders. NYSE direct has rules relating to order execution , see
www.nyse.com/pdfs/nysedirect.pdf . There are rules for executing n NYSE direct, contact your introducing broker for more information. I like NYSE NX , for most of my trades. If you trade over 1000 shares NYSE, I send my orders via the NYSE DOT, you may get price improvement on large orders. Remember, the specialist system is not an "auto-ex" and the specilaists's clerk must execute your order on the NYSE book. Market orders can sometimes take up to a minute to execute in a fast market. This is a long time for a "Day Trader". Our REDI+ order execution platform has routes on NYSE stocks for NYSE,NYSE NX(direct), ISLD,REDI & INCA. Remeber, the primary market for NYSE stocks is the NYSE, even though ISLD may be a "faster" execution in some instances, you may be giving up price improvement to gain speed of execution.
howardy2k-usually stocks under 5.00 are not marginable and you may not be able to borrow them , even for a day trade.
Gene Weissman
Lieber & Weissman Sec., LLC
gweissman@stocktrade.net