Having a little drawdown are we, Shadetree42? Don't worry; it will pass. Or maybe not. Lay off Robert Morse. He's a good guy and he contributes more meaningful content to this site than most.
FWIW, we are a sponsor too and normally don't weigh in on questions to a competitor on their threads Direct routing is not more expensive. Look at the commission structure. You can direct route as you wish. However, I recommend SMART because it should improve the chances for an execution. Unlike other brokers, IB doesn't forget about your order once it gets routed to a venue. We constantly monitor your order and re-routes all or part of your order attempting to get the best fill (and this includes passing on exchange rebates when available if you chose the tiered structure). IB does not sell order flow to TH. SMART routes to the best available execution and external audited reports consistently show IB's SMART routing getting much better price improvement and fills over the industry. https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1685 I'll start with Barron's who quotes: Fequent Trader's 1 Monthly Costs Barron's estimated a customer's monthly costs at each of the 16 brokers in this year's "Best Online Broker" ranking. Interactive Brokers was the best deal for both the occasional and frequent trader. Lowest Interactive Brokers $847 eOption $881 Just2Trade $1,163 Lightspeed Trading $1,200 SogoTrade $1,500
Of course you don't "sell" order flow to Timber Hill; TH is a subsidiary of Interactive Brokers Group so "selling" order flow would simply be transfer pricing internally among the subsidiaries and as such rather pointless. You do certainly direct order flow to Timber Hill and give them first look at IB SMART routed orders, it says so right in your order routing disclosure (https://gdcdyn.interactivebrokers.c...rmSampleView?ad=order_routing_disclosure.html). And you get paid for order flow to Timber Hill, also right in your own disclosures (https://www.interactivebrokers.com/download/1Q_2013_IB_ORDER_ROUTING_REPORT.pdf) And it's awfully suspicious that you hold orders without showing them to anyone simply because you've decided they aren't "marketable", then when you do decide that they're marketable the order goes to TH, never showing up on an exchange where it might influence prices. Again, you're being disingenuous with your answers at best. I'm going to call you on that every time and you look worse every time you do it. So why not just be an honest and forthright company, admit what you're doing and explain why (it makes you profitable and allows you to have lower costs), and maybe take some feedback to heart once in a while?
there is nothing disingenuous and although you may find it hard to believe, we put great effort into getting our clients the best fills and I stand by what I said. The order handling you referred to is designed to obtain better and less expensive fills against a number of liquidity providers. I don't have time to split hairs and argue with you now as it is late for me but the proof is in the pudding, feel free to test us side by side with any other broker and report the results - including adjustments for all fees and commissions.