Thanks! Suffering from a chronic, life-long illness is bad enough- but suffering from that illness while society refuses to acknowledge that the illness even exists at all, while the only effective treatment I've found is deemed a 'felony' with a scarlet-letter of stigma surrounding it... well, that just makes the situation a hundred times worse. I'm not looking for sympathy (nor do I even want any). All I want is understanding and a basic right to exist.
RM's occasional market calls...
- Thread starter Rearden Metal
- Start date
Thanks! Suffering from a chronic, life-long illness is bad enough- but suffering from that illness while society refuses to acknowledge that the illness even exists at all, while the only effective treatment I've found is deemed a 'felony' with a scarlet-letter of stigma surrounding it... well, that just makes the situation a hundred times worse. I'm not looking for sympathy (nor do I even want any). All I want is understanding and a basic right to exist.
Ok Rearden, I will love to read your journal!
RM... Did you post somewhere why you left Echo... Would you recommend Echo for other traders...
and thanks for the info on IB... vary illuminating...
Ok, here we go again:
Long ZSL with 75% of max buying power, right here, right now.
ZSL current price: 12.86.
Time frame: 1-3 days.
Regarding Echo: I can no longer recommend them. My main problem with Echo was their increasingly tight, often illogical risk control. When I set up shop with them in 2003, there were no max share caps at all- I basically had a free hand to go up to 30-1 leveraged intra-day and 5-1 overnight. But about three years ago they instituted max share caps- They set the software to disallow large positions in any individual stock or ETF. These share caps became increasingly restrictive until I finally parted ways with the firm a year ago. On very low priced stocks (2-4$ stocks like Citi) I wasn't even permitted <b>retail Reg-T margin</b> without special permission. There was also a difference of opinion on what should be done when I'm caught in bad positions and my unrealized account balance went red. I wanted the ability to ride it out and exit when I saw fit, while Echo was most concerned about the hypothetical possibility of me blowing up my account plus taking it deep into the red. They saw fit to forcibly liquidate all my positions in such situations, even though I had the ability to wire in sufficient funds the next day to cover any negative balances I may have caused.
The way I saw it, I was an asset to Echo. I was paying (gross) over 1/2 mil/year in commissions, and steering <b>many</b> ET members their way. The way they saw it, the theoretical possibility that I might blow up all of my money plus some of theirs (just two or three months worth of the commissions I was paying at the time), and then <i>not</i> pay them what was owed by immediately bringing my account balance back up to at least $0 (even though I would have never done that... there's no way I'd have ever stiffed them out of a single penny owed in the event my balance went negative. I always had other liquid assets on hand to replenish my trading account should I ever blow it up)- well, that was <i>their</i> primary concern, and they took many steps to restrict my trading to avoid such a hypothetical situation from ever occurring, and it totally cramped my style. I'm not saying I was right, or that they were... we just had an insurmountable difference of opinion. I thought I was a big enough asset to the firm to be granted a little leeway, and they just refused to see it that way.
Long ZSL with 75% of max buying power, right here, right now.
ZSL current price: 12.86.
Time frame: 1-3 days.
Regarding Echo: I can no longer recommend them. My main problem with Echo was their increasingly tight, often illogical risk control. When I set up shop with them in 2003, there were no max share caps at all- I basically had a free hand to go up to 30-1 leveraged intra-day and 5-1 overnight. But about three years ago they instituted max share caps- They set the software to disallow large positions in any individual stock or ETF. These share caps became increasingly restrictive until I finally parted ways with the firm a year ago. On very low priced stocks (2-4$ stocks like Citi) I wasn't even permitted <b>retail Reg-T margin</b> without special permission. There was also a difference of opinion on what should be done when I'm caught in bad positions and my unrealized account balance went red. I wanted the ability to ride it out and exit when I saw fit, while Echo was most concerned about the hypothetical possibility of me blowing up my account plus taking it deep into the red. They saw fit to forcibly liquidate all my positions in such situations, even though I had the ability to wire in sufficient funds the next day to cover any negative balances I may have caused.
The way I saw it, I was an asset to Echo. I was paying (gross) over 1/2 mil/year in commissions, and steering <b>many</b> ET members their way. The way they saw it, the theoretical possibility that I might blow up all of my money plus some of theirs (just two or three months worth of the commissions I was paying at the time), and then <i>not</i> pay them what was owed by immediately bringing my account balance back up to at least $0 (even though I would have never done that... there's no way I'd have ever stiffed them out of a single penny owed in the event my balance went negative. I always had other liquid assets on hand to replenish my trading account should I ever blow it up)- well, that was <i>their</i> primary concern, and they took many steps to restrict my trading to avoid such a hypothetical situation from ever occurring, and it totally cramped my style. I'm not saying I was right, or that they were... we just had an insurmountable difference of opinion. I thought I was a big enough asset to the firm to be granted a little leeway, and they just refused to see it that way.
<i>"out of $0.5M in gross commissions Echo pocketed only how much? maybe a quarter or $125K?"</i>
--->I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, I'm just wondering: How'd you figure those numbers?
--->I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, I'm just wondering: How'd you figure those numbers?
<i>pretty much out of my arse i guess... </i>
Yeah, that's what I figured.
Exchange fees (or rebates) are calculated entirely separate from the commissions paid to a prop firm (unless you're paying a 'blended' rate, which I wasn't). I was paying Echo 1/2 mil/year in commissions, and ECN and SEC fees are not in any way a part of that number. Those things are completely separate.
BTW, not to complicate things even farther, but the exchanges (ARCA & ISLD ECN's mostly) actually paid me to trade there, and not the other way around, since I generally added liquidity and had a pass-through (as opposed to blended) commission rate. If you didn't understand that last sentence, don't worry about it, just rest assured that no exchange took a single penny of the 1/2 mil/year revenue stream I once was to Echo.
</i>Yeah, that's what I figured.
Exchange fees (or rebates) are calculated entirely separate from the commissions paid to a prop firm (unless you're paying a 'blended' rate, which I wasn't). I was paying Echo 1/2 mil/year in commissions, and ECN and SEC fees are not in any way a part of that number. Those things are completely separate.
BTW, not to complicate things even farther, but the exchanges (ARCA & ISLD ECN's mostly) actually paid me to trade there, and not the other way around, since I generally added liquidity and had a pass-through (as opposed to blended) commission rate. If you didn't understand that last sentence, don't worry about it, just rest assured that no exchange took a single penny of the 1/2 mil/year revenue stream I once was to Echo.
Quote from Rearden Metal:
<i>pretty much out of my arse i guess...
Yeah, that's what I figured.
Exchange fees (or rebates) are calculated entirely separately from the commissions paid to a prop firm (unless you're paying a 'blended' rate, which I wasn't). I was paying Echo 1/2 mil/year in commissions. ECN and SEC fees are not part of that number. ..
yeah, i misunderstood what you meant by gross comm. thanks.
back ZSL trade