My understanding is that TD Thinkorswim has free commissions for all trades, even if directly routed to an exchange of my choice. I currently have an account at Interactive Brokers. What would be the advantage of having an account with Interactive Brokers over TD Ameritrade if Interactive is going to charge .005 a share?
TD is only free for listed stocks and they only offer a very limited number of routes and order options. IB offers over a dozen routes and many more order types, options, etc. whether or not you care about this and find it worth paying a commission for depends a lot on your style of trading. Also, if you often place limit orders instead of market orders, you should consider using IB’s tiered commissions which are cheaper, often much cheaper, than the flat $0.005/share.
Sorry, but no. TD's equity orders are sent to an equity MM like most of these free services. The free trading at TD and other online brokers has been great for our business. It has shown traders the benefit of active trader software where you can have choice of routing and trade from 4 am to 8 pm with great support/service. And, if you choose me as your salesperson, you get me too. These are our routes and their cost. https://www.lightspeed.com/pricing/routing-fees/
For people who don't see the advantage, there's none. In other words, if you don't need multitude of features offered by IB, there's no value in it. During these turbulent times, there were instances I could not use TD for charting because everything was freezing up, so I had to switch to IB which never had as much as a hickup. During times like these, one hick up may make a huge difference in your pnl.
I've said this elsewhere on similar threads, but forget commission. Brokers will need to make money somewhere. And I guarantee you that a tick/1cent difference in execution price once every 10 or so trades will cost you more than commission does. Thinkorswim is a great platform. But don't pick them because of the commission structure.
Can Thinkorswim send the strategy signals automatically to trade in the TD account, running just like an algo.
Can you use market-on-open and market-on-close orders using TD Ameritrade/Thinkorswim? That is can you participate in the opening and closing cross?