IB losing the edge in commissions!

Quote from virgin:

Never had any problems with J-trader...

Can you give me some concrete

examples when things go wrong ?


"Disapearing trades" , "Very slow response to cancelling orders" , "execution of orders that were cancelled

How much more "concrete" would you like H2O to be? What about this do you not understand?

Michael B.
 
Quote from kowboy:

I don't know about futures alternatives, but for equities, Pointdirex supplies level2 and some basic charting, etc. for $39.95 per month and only charges .005 plus ecn pass throughs.

Correct me if I am wrong, for the same from IB you pay $10 plus $20 for level 2, and IB only has rudimentary charts.

I have an account with IB for back up purposes, and don't understand the great following when they don't appear to be the cheaper alternative, especially if you add on the extra fees IB charges for a front end execution package.


Hey that is refreshing.....IB for back up....hey Def....maybe CS is getting better!

Could this be true....ninja traders and button traders pay more per trade for eminis....or is that just equities....really?

Michael B.
 
Quote from nitro:


I would be extatic.

nitro


Nitroooooo, with your volume I would guess you have cut a deal with IB!!! or at least they should take you out to McDonalds.

:)

Michael B.
 
Quote from DHOHHI:



Obviously you're not a math major. How can selling 300 shares in 100 share lots produce a $12 commission at MB with a $3 minimum? It can't. In your feeble scenario it would cost $9 ($3 min. x 3 trades). Sorry to correct you again. Anyway, any trader who needs to unload 300 shares in increments isn't much of a trader IMO. It would cost $3 to sell (or buy) 300 shares at MB in a single trade ... exactly the same as with IB. Bottom line is that you must be having trouble trading and being profitable if you're whining about commissions at IB. I'd guess you weren't trading full time 5 or 10 years ago. And you failed to factor in the monthly IB fees, which MB doesn't have. If you want to compare costs then compare ALL of them.



I was referring to a round trip of buying 300 shares and selling 100 shares at a time. That's 4 transactions multiple $3 each. It was written clearly in my post.

And once again I must mention the eminis fees, which are 35% higher (3.25 vs 2.4) - that's regardless of how many lots you trade.

IB monthly costs ($10) are waived after only $30 monthly commissions, so that's not really a factor.

The whole thing has nothing to do with me being or not being a trader. These are the numbers and my personality does not affect them.

Being profitable or not has nothing to do with wanting to pay less commissions. Any wise person would prefer to get the same service for less money. If a broker lowers commissions but keeps the service level, every client, loser as winner, benefit the same amount of $ that they now pay less.

By the way not that I have something against MBT or against anyone, it's just that ChrisRT's reply sounded very much as if he is a getting paid to promote it, plus I bet you that he never even tried TWS even once, so where does he have the knowledge to call it inferior. I'd just expect more from a guy in his status and with his history (he runs a well established advisory service).

Cheers
50
 
Quote from shneed:

The advantages of trading with IB are enormous. Especially if you are just starting out, and not just commissions. I got very spoiled trading with them. No wire fees, if you request a wire by 12, you get it the same day. No SEC fees (when you are doing volume, especially higher priced stocks, these add up.) The amount of products to trade, probably more then any one broker offers. And so on.

shneed

This is worth $20.00 extra per paycheck....good point...and with ACH coming, putting money in will be easier too.

Michael B.
 
Quote from Lobster:

Let me just say that we might be forgetting something: IB does have an excellent globex data feed (including market depth). Why pay $50 a month for a data feed that is real time 99.9% of the time, but lags 5 seconds behind in those few seconds per week when you need it most (high volume). I don't know how they did it, but IB's globex feed has not had any noticable lag for at least several months now, no matter what the conditions. I don't know about you, but I think the ability to have non-lagging quotes in your execution platform (TWS) is worth something.


agreed


Michael B.
 
Quote from hayman:

IB really has been great for me. Low commissions, and adequate service whenever I call. The interface is simple, but does the job. I was attracted to IB for its commission schedule, no doubt.

I am definitely going to try out Tradestation now, due to its lowering of commission rates. I was always attracted to their platform (the thought of having a programmatic interface that can backtest trading algorithms in their historical DB is priceless), but their commission rates put them out of reach for me in the past.

Now is a different story. IB will need to counteract Tradestation's lowering of commission rates to keep my business, unless the Tradestation platform doesn't cut the mustard for me.


Hey Def;

As you wrote in your post IB has some great features including good software, good margin, sipc protection etc etc... no doubt.

But, if you read hayman's post that I quoted here, you'll see why I started this thread.. you guys at IB have to keep your edge in commissions. Give those other brokers some hell and make them bite their tongue! They're teasing you... TS chose to offer $2.5 rate per emini when IB offers $2.4 - that's teasing. I say lower emini rates to $2/contract and show them that IB cannot be messed with!! Have them crawl back to the hole that they came from!!

Thanks for listening
50
 
I'm sure we'll respond at some point.

In the meantime, i hear software like wealthlab's which can interface with IB is amongst the best on the street for back testing.
 
IB doesn't charge extra to use Ninjatrader for futures. Right now the use of Ninjatrader is the only thing that keeps most of my volume going thru IB. Eventually I hope there will be an application that supports the Patsystems api. When that happens I'd most likely direct most of my volume to AF. If you ever used the dome and trade management features of Ninjatrader I find it hard to use the jtrader dome as the primary trading mechanism.


Quote from ElectricSavant:




Hey that is refreshing.....IB for back up....hey Def....maybe CS is getting better!

Could this be true....ninja traders and button traders pay more per trade for eminis....or is that just equities....really?

Michael B.
 
Quote from 50 cent:




Hey Def;

As you wrote in your post IB has some great features including good software, good margin, sipc protection etc etc... no doubt.

But, if you read hayman's post that I quoted here, you'll see why I started this thread.. you guys at IB have to keep your edge in commissions. Give those other brokers some hell and make them bite their tongue! They're teasing you... TS chose to offer $2.5 rate per emini when IB offers $2.4 - that's teasing. I say lower emini rates to $2/contract and show them that IB cannot be messed with!! Have them crawl back to the hole that they came from!!

Thanks for listening
50

Right now there are offers to be had, that are considerably lower than $4, even if you don't do more than 1000 rt/month. I'm not here to bash IB, i never had a problem with them. The only thing i didn't like was TWS. If you like to scale in/out you will need a front-end for it, which remains a half-hearted solution. Other than that i would have no pressing reason to change from IB, imo the tick-size on the e-mini's is a much bigger issue than the commissions.
 
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