By the way, I see Robert Morse has some connections with Lightspeed Trading, so maybe he can offer a more "broker" view on these things.
Currently I have an account with Interactive Brokers and use their API for getting marketdata and sending orders but I write my own stuff.
The greatest problem I have is the unlimited loss nature of the current exchange-traded options and CFDs or futures (which I use for hedging).
So I wanna use these "capped" type of instruments, in order to garrantee I can't go bankrupt (not only lose my account but also my house).
And in fact, capping at a strike price swing is enormous. In quant talk, predicting anything beyond two standard deviations of the current ATM volatility has the same reliability as reading in chicken entrails.
So what I truly want is cap things at 2x standard deviations with respect to the end of day at-the-money implied volatility.
And I wanna either use a broker who already has that or develop (and price) the stuff myself for a broker who's interested in it.
I have several brokers in mind, but most important thing is convincing "the market", that is you guys, that it's better to trade this stuff rather than the broken exchange stuff.
The exchange stuff and it's unlimited loss nature creates crysis after crysis where only the small guys like us lose their houses, because the "too big to fail" fuc*ers never pay in full.
Never pay even close to full, so they can afford to keep the charade going since they aren't the ones paying, but the little people.