Trouble finding the right broker/platform for trading strategy

N

novagirl123

I developed a trading strategy that has worked for me for about a year now. In summary I use E*Trade Pro to short mostly hard-to-borrow stocks at market open and cover with a 20% gain or until a stop loss is reached. Even with borrow fees the strategy is working well for me for my purposes. That said, I've been entering orders immediately prior to market open and throughout the day, even though I identify the stocks the night before.

My situation has changed and I am no longer able to enter orders during the day, so I need to be able to enter a One-Triggers-OCO order the night before. E*Trade offers this type of order, BUT it doesn't allow conditional orders to be placed with HTB stocks, and even if it did, the price for the OCO portion of the order cannot automatically be based on the execution price of the initial short sell order (all prices must be manually entered). I started looking at different brokers but they either don't have a good selection of HTB stocks available to short or don't offer a One-Triggers-OCO order.

Does anyone have suggestions or thoughts on brokers/platforms that would provide these capabilities? As a part-time trader the IB commissions are awfully high relative to other brokers; ideally a fixed-price per trade (not per share) would be best given the amount of trading I do.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.
 
novagirl123 said:
I developed a trading strategy that has worked for me for about a year now. In summary I use E*Trade Pro to short mostly hard-to-borrow stocks at market open and cover with a 20% gain or until a stop loss is reached. Even with borrow fees the strategy is working well for me for my purposes. That said, I've been entering orders immediately prior to market open and throughout the day, even though I identify the stocks the night before.

My situation has changed and I am no longer able to enter orders during the day, so I need to be able to enter a One-Triggers-OCO order the night before. E*Trade offers this type of order, BUT it doesn't allow conditional orders to be placed with HTB stocks, and even if it did, the price for the OCO portion of the order cannot automatically be based on the execution price of the initial short sell order (all prices must be manually entered). I started looking at different brokers but they either don't have a good selection of HTB stocks available to short or don't offer a One-Triggers-OCO order.

Does anyone have suggestions or thoughts on brokers/platforms that would provide these capabilities? As a part-time trader the IB commissions are awfully high relative to other brokers; ideally a fixed-price per trade (not per share) would be best given the amount of trading I do.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.
More...

Re fees: you need to learn about payment of order flow and interest costs. I bet taking those into account IB is much more cost effective.
 
Does anyone know if IB charges Hard-to-borrow interest for stocks sold short and covered the same day, or is the interest charged for overnight holds only? [I got different answers when I called IB] Also, is the interest charged the "Fee rate" or "Rebate rate" shown in the SLB tool?

For HTB stocks the rebate rate is negative and for ETB stocks the rebate rate is positive. I'm not an institutional client so I assume that I don't actually RECEIVE interest for shorting ETB stocks. But I am not charged interest for shorting ETB stocks either, correct?

Yes, I read the page about this on the IB website but it seems geared towards institutional clients or retail investors with lots of $$$$; this does not fit my case..

Definitions -
Fee rate
Interest rate charted on borrowed shares.

Rebate rate
Fed funds rate minus the interest rate charged on borrowed shares.

https://ibkr.info/node/41
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top