Trading futures without commissions - Tradovate ?

What I find most confusing is how can they advertise "unlimited trading at a flat price" and "imagine not paying a per-trade commission".

I guess the second slogan is accurate because you will have to just keep imagining. They just relabeled commission as a 9c transaction fee.

Also, several of the "exchange fees" are higher than actual exchange fees. Brent and Gasoil are both 40c higher. I suspect there are others.

A 9c fee is pretty low for most guys here. Tradovate should just advertise it for what it is. Stop messing with semantics.
 
garachen said:
Tradovate should just advertise it for what it is. Stop messing with semantics.
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I agree completely.

It appears that for some retail traders, their offer will probably work out pretty well.

The huge irony is that the distorted way they're describing it is just going to alienate people (because the obviously deceptive language is the first thing they'll see) and dissuade them from looking at the detail. A real "triumph of marketing", that is.
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I think I get it now.

"Flat price" doesn't mean no commission. It means flat non-tiered commission.

And the "imagine" part speaks for itself. Putting them together on the same page would lead people to believe that they do not charge a per trade commission.

But they never ...actually... say that
 
garachen said:
What I find most confusing is how can they advertise "unlimited trading at a flat price" and "imagine not paying a per-trade commission".

I guess the second slogan is accurate because you will have to just keep imagining. They just relabeled commission as a 9c transaction fee.
More...

Since we are an introducing broker and not a clearing firm, we pay to clear the trade and there is a real cost associated to that. Some other non-clearing firms charge clearing fees (in addition to the commissions they charge) at a much higher rate, using that as a profit center, which is not the approach we are taking at Tradovate.

Also, just to clarify, we do not charge a per-trade commission, order routing fees, or platform fees and our membership plans are a flat rate.

garachen said:
Also, several of the "exchange fees" are higher than actual exchange fees. Brent and Gasoil are both 40c higher. I suspect there are others.
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Our clearing firm is not a clearing member at ICE Europe or Eurex and these are the standard fees they charge across the firm.

If you have any other questions on how our pricing works, please feel free to contact us at support@tradovate.com Thanks!
 
They can call the fees the way they want, they can call them "clearing fee", "transaction fee" or even the "muppet show fee" if they like.
What really matters to me is that you can trade the emini for 2.54 per roundturn, all in. You can trade the FGBL and FGBM for less than 1.00 per roundturn ! Show me another broker that offers you this without crazy monthly volume and I will eat my shorts...

I understand many people are skeptic, too many scammers out there. But if a real good company with a real good business idea shows up, why not give some kudos to them and start to take advantage of what they have to offer instead of complaining ?

Yes they are a new player, but two more reasons why I like them, besides of their fee structure:
- they clear through Dorman, which is a great FCM with a long tradition
- I checked their website and I found that the founder and CEO of Tradovate is Rick Tomsic, who founded OpenECry many years ago, so a real pioneer in electronic retail trading. So no noob in the business but somebody who has been around for a while.
 
This place claims commission-free trading.

There’s good and bad here.

The bad is they simply renamed their commissions and they are not so upfront about that. Some will consider it deceptive advertising. Generally, in futures trading, per contract costs outside of pass-through fees are commissions. Trado charges commissions but they recharacterized them as fees. Trado claims a specific cost justification for doing this, but it is bogus.

The good is that Trado is completely upfront about their monthly fees. And the $0.09 per-contract per-side commission (not fees) that they charge, combined with that monthly fee, is very good for certain higher-volume traders.
 
J.P. said:
The bad is they simply renamed their commissions and they are not so upfront about that. Some will consider it deceptive advertising. Generally, in futures trading, per contract costs outside of pass-through fees are commissions. Trado charges commissions but they recharacterized them as fees. Trado claims a specific cost justification for doing this, but it is bogus.
More...

Since we are an introducing broker and not a clearing firm, we pay to clear the trade and there is a real cost associated to that. As you indicated, this is a pass-through fee, which is why it is not labeled a commission.

Some other non-clearing firms charge clearing fees (in addition to the commissions they charge) at a much higher rate, using that as a profit center, which is not the approach we are taking at Tradovate.

Also, just to clarify, we do not charge a per-trade commission, order routing fees, or platform fees and our membership plans are a flat rate.
 
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