%% ''Wasn't making money '' could be considered the biggest conflict of ALL /LOL I got conflicted today on seeing a XLF profit reduced, so stopped that conflict I wish everybody was like the SEC \actually reducing fees............................................................................................
This is the official press release regarding the closing down of Timber Hill: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=24473 In it, it states "Today retail order-flow is purchased by large order internalizers and joining them would represent a conflict we do not wish to have." I would take "conflict" as "conflict of interest". In the Wikipedia page of Interactive Brokers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Brokers, it is further states "In 2001, the corporate name of the Timber Hill Group LLC was changed to Interactive Brokers Group LLC, which at the time handled 200,000 trades per day. In 2002, Interactive Brokers, along with the Bourse de Montréal and the Boston Stock Exchange, created the Boston Options Exchange.". And actually until its current day, "Interactive Brokers Group owns 40 percent of the futures exchange OneChicago, and is an equity partner and founder of the Boston Options Exchange." so in essence IB still owns that options exchange in a way. So I am not wrong in saying Timber Hill was closed down due to conflict of interest and it's an exchange not just a market maker. Do your own research and know your own company better before you want to do any PR to spin some factual statements people made. I wasn't going to say the following but since you decided to spin further out of something that wasn't even said, I have no choice but to say the following: How do you win against people who can see every single trade you made at exactly the price? The very fact that IB couldn't make money with Timber Hill because it didn't have access to order flow then exactly illustrates the fact we don't know how much more potential profit that we retail traders are losing right now to brokers that use PFO and use exclusively PFO like Robinhood. The argument that we get better execution and/or better price is just BS. And this has already been proven many times in retail Forex where there is no central exchanges at all and the broker you trade with is the market maker that takes the other side of your transaction, you win only at the expense of the broker losing then WHY would the broker let you win while it loses all the time? What's the point of getting a better price and/or faster execution when the dealer can just "work it" later to take you out of the game? Remember with PFO, we the retail traders have zero access to the central exchanges. The central exchanges are exclusively for the dealers or the market makers who have paid the brokers to execute your orders so they basically are the opposite side of your transaction. It's as if there is no central exchanges just like the retail Forex with PFO. And I am glad that IB has now finally admitted that they do play the "add/remove liquidity" game as I and many others have observed many times with how IB manipulated order routing to turn my and I am sure numerous others' liquidity-adding orders to liquidity-removing orders just to rob us the rebate fees. Disclosing it in a 606 statement is just window dressing to satisfy the useless "compliance" requirement. It's like a thief confessing to the theft after-the-fact "yup yup yup I did it" just so it can get away with jail. How about just not doing it? Or compensating traders for the rebate fees that they were supposed to get?
I'm glad you think you know more than me who is on the inside as opposed to you who take one sentence of a press release and spin it to your liking. Let's say a firm or someone with a multi-billion dollar war chest with access with math skills and deep knowledge on how markets worked and all the licenses wanted to get into the HFT/PFOF game. Would you bet on their ability to make a profit? Now take that same firm or person with this war chest and they decide they don't like the ethics behind it or perhaps they think their resources are better focused on building something different, more meaningful and more interesting to them. Add/remove game - whatever, you are wrong on the focus to provide best-ex but I can say it is sunny out on a bright and sunny day and you'll point to the tiny cloud way off in the distance to prove me wrong. Independent audits and stats show we obtain better price improvement than the market overall but of of course that could vary on what you trade, how you trade etc. Competition is good, makes us all better.
More free grammar lessons for you : more than me, not more then me. "then" is a conjunctive phrase meaning "afterwards" as in "I signed up with IB as a client and then I realized how wrong that decision was". "than" is a comparative phrase that is used to compare two different objects as in "I am surprised to always learn that I know more about IB than somebody who works for IB." I did not spin. "Conflict" can only mean "conflict of interest" here in that sentence in the press release. Everybody can see that. What else can it mean then (another example of usage of the word "then")? The conflict in Syria? Great PR spinning seizing on something that was never brought up. We all applaud for IB's great ethics of not going into PFO or at least not to the extent like other brokerages like TOS or Robinhood. There! I am not wrong as what I have experienced has been experienced and observed by numerous others as there have been numerous threads here on ET talking about the dubious order routing practices by IB to deny traders of rebate fees that they should've earned. So it's not just a "tiny cloud way off in the distance"; no it's the entire sky is cloudy and there is no sun but IB insists the sun is out and a sunny day is supposed to be with a grey sky. And they have disclosed it that it's a grey sky so everything is ok. Yeah independent audits who look at very selectively few instances in very specific controlled scenarios where IB gave a price better than the market and IB advertises it as the norm. Yes, thank God for competition. Can't imagine if IB is the monopoly.
I agree with above. HFT became too competitive and many firms had to fold or merge to stay alive. Add to that bad PR and possible conflict of interest. Makes sense. But I suspect some of that code/functionality got moved inside IB and caused lots of grief to @JSOP
Just out of curiousity,what's the beef with PFO??? I have found it to be an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage
IB's order routing practices to deny us traders of rebate fees that we are supposed to get has nothing to do with HFT. I have discussed them in numerous threads here on ET if you want to find them. Other people have noticed the same thing too. @def knows it and being an employee of IB, he just cannot comment on it but he knows what's going on and he's not denying it. And ironically IB actually gives you hell for any suspicion of HFT trading practices. I just canceled a few orders that I didn't even send to their server which does not impact the market in any way and I got a manager of IB yelling at me telling me they are HFT. LOL Just shows the quality of people that IB employs. Yes yes it is a discount brokerage so you get what you paid for but I would feel better if they at least admit it and try to resolve it so instead of having someone here to always try to deny it, spin it or blame it on the traders but then again it's IB.