What % of your P&L is going to commissions?

Swing trading - 200-250 round-trips per year
Hold time of winners days to months

My last year as a full time day trader I paid $44k in commissions/fees - I finished flat, I switched to swing trading and never looked back. Nothing worse than working like a dog to make your broker richer!
 
Bekim said:
I’m usually trading 100 contracts or more so this commission seems to be good compared to most others I have seen, except for flat $40 a month. That almost sounds too good to be true. But I hope it is true
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Do you use marketable or non marketable orders? If non marketable you'll take rebates larger than commissions with IB at that volume.
 
beerntrading said:
Do you use marketable or non marketable orders? If non marketable you'll take rebates larger than commissions with IB at that volume.
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I was thinking about that, I regularly get filled below the mid market. I was talking with someone who trades the same strategy I do with IB and he told me the rebates only happen for him 1 out of 10 orders. But then again maybe it would more for me if I was more selective of my fill price.
 
Bekim said:
Or 10% of your tuition to the market
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So true, but it has been a phenomenal experience getting more systematic, and lowering risk but we have not seen February "event" recur so you never know. Hoping to turn it around to positive range by end of year and if that were to happen, all commissions and all tuitions are forgiven.
 
harryp said:
So true, but it has been a phenomenal experience getting more systematic, and lowering risk but we have not seen February "event" recur so you never know. Hoping to turn it around to positive range by end of year and if that were to happen, all commissions and all tuitions are forgiven.
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Yeah, their is a lot of people still recovering from February.
 
Bekim said:
I was thinking about that, I regularly get filled below the mid market. I was talking with someone who trades the same strategy I do with IB and he told me the rebates only happen for him 1 out of 10 orders. But then again maybe it would more for me if I was more selective of my fill price.
More...
Yeah, if you're looking for a fill now based on underlying price, you'll have to use marketable orders. It's not uncommon I wait 3-4 hours for a fill...and I'll happy to let the opportunity pass if I don't get the price I want. But the only time I'm anywhere near "mid" (or what would be mid absent my liquidity) is when I'm exiting at a massive profit and getting out is more important than a good fill. But for opening orders, I'm north of 90% with rebates...about .12 per contract in net commission is what I pay. If I hit the next volume tier, that'd be -0.13.

That'd said, you lose a bit of liquidity advantage when you're trading 100 contacts. You'd get a ton of partial fills showing that much on the bid. What you could do though is small "look forward" orders to fish out the hidden liquidity, and keep bringing the big order up behind to rest just bellow hidden that fills...then wait for a fill on the chop.

Another caveat is that you have to use "SMART max rebate" routing and can't control the exchange (you can direct route, but lose tier discounts). It sucks on shares because it constantly routes to the tame PSX, but options are pretty consistently BATS or CBOE/2 which offer plenty of action.
 
beerntrading said:
Yeah, if you're looking for a fill now based on underlying price, you'll have to use marketable orders. It's not uncommon I wait 3-4 hours for a fill...and I'll happy to let the opportunity pass if I don't get the price I want. But the only time I'm anywhere near "mid" (or what would be mid absent my liquidity) is when I'm exiting at a massive profit and getting out is more important than a good fill. But for opening orders, I'm north of 90% with rebates...about .12 per contract in net commission is what I pay. If I hit the next volume tier, that'd be -0.13.

That'd said, you lose a bit of liquidity advantage when you're trading 100 contacts. You'd get a ton of partial fills showing that much on the bid. What you could do though is small "look forward" orders to fish out the hidden liquidity, and keep bringing the big order up behind to rest just bellow hidden that fills...then wait for a fill on the chop.

Another caveat is that you have to use "SMART max rebate" routing and can't control the exchange (you can direct route, but lose tier discounts). It sucks on shares because it constantly routes to the tame PSX, but options are pretty consistently BATS or CBOE/2 which offer plenty of action.
More...

Thanks for our input, I usually start low and work my way up the the price I"M willing to get filled. I opened a paper trading account to mess around with the platform, I see smart but I am not seeing SMART max rebate? thanks
 
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