Quote from rufus_4000:
For the record, I am a member of CME and Eurex, and frankly the membership process to become members of those exchanges are, how do I put it? Trivial. From what my attorney is telling me, the TMX participant has to be registered with IRROC (?), which is basically the canadian version of NASD, and there are known tricks to become a registered broker / dealer in the US quickly (weeks instead of *years*). I imagine similar backdoors exist in Canada as well.
The Canadian model is based on NASD...
But there is nothing "trivial" about being an NASD member...
The entire system is geared to regulate retail brokers that deal with public Customers...
So an independent trader becomes subject an onerous administrative load...
And you will get a new Examiner roughly once per year...
Who may ignore you or may spend 100 hours looking up your asshole.
That's why Bernie Madoff registered as on Investment Advisor...
The NASD Broker-Dealer run by his sons was under a focking microscope.
You are also locked into an exclusive annual contract with a Clearing Firm...
And your Clearing Firm is definitely not your friend.
I owned a US Broker-Dealer for 7 years and shut it down in 2005... best move I ever made.
To make a long story short...
You are extremely unlikely to trade cheaper than IB in Canada no matter what you do...
No Clearing Firm will give you a better deal because they don't have to...
You should be trading ETFs for free (with rebates)... and everything else at < $0.003/share.
The OP's stated business goal is to go head-to-head with Goldman and the like...
So best of luck to him with that one.