Quote from axeman:
My question remains.
Is IB imposing these fee's to keep programmatic traders
from competing with THEM, or are they passing through
a fee to us? ( This applies to stocks, not just options )
peace
axeman
Could be wrong, but I thought the reason was that some ECNs charge cancel fees. IB's model is geared towards its SMART routing where it can control the cost of displaying your order into the marketplace. If you directly control where your order gets routed, then their model assumptions are no longer valid. They penalize automation of direct orders because automation has the capability (through a huge amount of orders) of skewing their pricing model. I don't think that they charge you cancel fees for manual orders because they don't expect anybody to send in a huge amount of these manual orders (and thus it will have a negligible affect on their pricing model).