I've been dilly dallying around opening an account with Echotrade because of the concern with professional exchange fees. It's not paying them once a month that bothers me, but having to pay it over and over again. I'm going to contact Echo again next week about these concerns; in the meantime, here is what I'm thinking; let me know if any of you using a professional firm have gotten around all this. (I remember rtharp saying he has someone else subscribe to third party software for him, so he can get around paying pro fees there, but I'm not sure I can do that in all cases.)
If I were to open an account with Echo, I would still plan on using two other brokerages. First, IB, if only for options trading. Second, OnSite Trading, because they have the most extensive short list that I know of. (Unless Echo has a large short list, then I could dump OnSite). So I can't exactly use someone else's name on either of these. Plus I use third party charting software, and from time to time I try different tools that require live quotes, and I consider it a pain in the butt to have someone else sign up for a service that I'm using. Plus if I had someone else subscribe to these services, I imagine I couldn't write off the expenses for them from my taxes.
I don't know; maybe I could get away with not telling all these parties that I have a pro license, but I'm just afraid somehow the NYSE is going to find out about it years later, and all the sudden demand back payment of $127.25/mo for every software, brokerage and who knows what else that I've been using.
Am I being paranoid here?
If I were to open an account with Echo, I would still plan on using two other brokerages. First, IB, if only for options trading. Second, OnSite Trading, because they have the most extensive short list that I know of. (Unless Echo has a large short list, then I could dump OnSite). So I can't exactly use someone else's name on either of these. Plus I use third party charting software, and from time to time I try different tools that require live quotes, and I consider it a pain in the butt to have someone else sign up for a service that I'm using. Plus if I had someone else subscribe to these services, I imagine I couldn't write off the expenses for them from my taxes.
I don't know; maybe I could get away with not telling all these parties that I have a pro license, but I'm just afraid somehow the NYSE is going to find out about it years later, and all the sudden demand back payment of $127.25/mo for every software, brokerage and who knows what else that I've been using.
Am I being paranoid here?