I have tried real hard to make my IB trading accounts work for over a year now. I have literally had side by side comparison between an IB account and a TD Ameritrade account (and in fact, also a merrill edge account) that have 5 to 6 digit account sizes. They essentially do market orders on large cap stocks (liquid enough). In IB case, since I found (and suggested by others from this thread) that its market order fills are bad, I switched to midprice. The problem is, IB's fills are consistently worse than others. I'm very surprised and disappointed as I thought IB is good for 'pro' traders. But the fill qualities are consistently worse (in fact, can be a large margin like 0.1-0.2% a day), I now have to decide to call it quit. Maybe I don't know other order types that can be similar to market orders but can have at least comparable fill qualities as TD or others. I need to get the orders filled quickly, around market prices: have also tried adaptive price, which was no good either. Any tips are welcome. If you are someone from IB, please also help: I think my experience certainly helps others and very relevant.
Just their free route. But I don't really see why this can make much difference, especially compared with TD or Merrill Edge.
It makes af big difference if you route direct. I have mostly traded Nasdaq stock and routed to Nasdaq or ARCA, with DASH TRADER as front end, it works OK. TWS is very slow to trade with, if you scalp. But everthing is relative. There is a YouTube guy *Trade with Chris* he scalps with TD, I think comission free, and is ultra active. Have you tried DAS, Sterling or Real Tick as front end with IB
We do not offer free routing, but in additional to Lightspeed Trader, we also offer Sterling Trader Pro, Realtick and limited to larger small cap customers, DAS.
You can also use MEDVED TRADER as front end. It is only 25 bucks pr. MD. Or use Lightspeed, Center Point, Speed Trader, Cobra or Dash Prime
You can also use Alaric Securties, as Broker they also offer Lightspeed Trader, Sterling and their own comission free platform *If they take US persons*. You can also buy a Seat on Nye York Stock E * A lot of good ideas *-)
Well, you can't do that anymore. I once invested in a Barrel of Whisky. It cost me about $1100 and after 9 years I sold it for $3000. I should have bought 10 of them!
largib, sorry to hear but not really surprised. With Alaric Securities you can self-direct to many routes with much better execution capabilities. Besides all DMAs, there's plenty of smart routes, algo, and dark pools which are often better venues for lower liquidity stocks. There's even price-improvement venues where execution is within the spread even if you do not send to mid-point.