Price WAR!

SoesWasBetter · Feb 28, 2017

Behold the price carnage in ETFC SCHW AMTD

Looking forward to Interactive Brokers lowering their rate to a 1/4 cent each way on stocks.

1 cent round trip is too high in this environment for daytrading. Has been for some time.

ADONAI1ST · Feb 28, 2017

felixbocharov · Feb 28, 2017

Good for us, bad for them.

southall · Feb 28, 2017

I havent traded stocks in a long time.

What do all these firms currently charge for buying say 100 , 1000 and 5000 shares of an everyday stock trading around $50?

jeb9999 · Feb 28, 2017

SoesWasBetter said:
Behold the price carnage in ETFC SCHW AMTD

Looking forward to Interactive Brokers lowering their rate to a 1/4 cent each way on stocks.

1 cent round trip is too high in this environment for daytrading. Has been for some time.

I pointed out the initial round of price cutting here:

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/recent-cuts-in-commissions.306937/

and asked

"Which broker will be next to drop rates?

When was the last time Interactive Brokers lowered their commissions?"

In 2016 IB's Electronic Brokerage pretax profit margin was 61%, up from 49% in 2015.

IB has plenty of room to cut commissions if they are interested in shaking up the brokerage marketplace.

Or maybe they want a pretax profit margin of 75%.

autom · Feb 28, 2017

Robinhood app - zero commission. I think that is what is triggering all this

Sig · Feb 28, 2017

I realized today that it's about 25% cheaper to trade a 10 contract SPX spread on Schwab, plain old Charles Schwab IRA account, than it was at IB. Granted Schwab's old, stuffy, and very retail, but also don't have all the maddening idiocy that IB does in the interest of "low cost". When they're actually significantly more expensive, what's their excuse now!

S2007S · Feb 28, 2017

autom said:
Robinhood app - zero commission. I think that is what is triggering all this

I don't think it's them causing others to reduce commission costs....people barely know about robinhood..

truetype · Feb 28, 2017

jeb9999 said:
When was the last time Interactive Brokers lowered their commissions?... IB has plenty of room to cut commissions...

The mainstream online brokers are still far above IB in commish and margin rates. IB isn't being pressured by them, at least not yet.

Sig · Feb 28, 2017

truetype said:
The mainstream online brokers are still far above IB in commish and margin rates. IB isn't being pressured by them, at least not yet.

Actually they're not in every case, did you read my post above? When Schwab is cheaper than you it's hard to claim you're ultra low cost! They are pretty far ahead on margin rates though, for those who use that service.