Brokers survey

[Kim 7,499]

I created a short survey regarding the brokers, if you please spend 30 seconds to fill it.

 

Thanks!

[aircal 1]

I'm in the process of opening an account with eoptions since they are the lowest, and I've never had a more frustrating customer service experience - they are truly f***ed up...

[Guest Peticolas]

I'm in the process of opening an account with eoptions since they are the lowest, and I've never had a more frustrating customer service experience - they are truly f***ed up...

 

I'm sorry you're having a frustrating experience. I understand your focusing on commissions, but aside from the poor customer service, eoptions has a terrible order entry system, and their non-commission fees are quite high (you have to read the fine print on that).  You might want to consider IB or TDAmeritrade.  If trading costs are paramount, IB would be the way to go.

[aircal 1]

I have two TOS accounts, I was opening an account at eoptions for a particular autotrade program.

I will check out IB, thanks.

[JZ7 0]

TOS by far has the easiest and best (imo) software/trading platform available.  IB has the better commissions but it truly is no frills/extras.  With TOS they can also negotiate a lower commission rate to (did for me), IB's rate is set in stone.

[Fatiflyer 3]

Hi all,

 

For my point of view the best option platform is TOS, what a pitty that I'm living in a country in which it isn't possible to open a TD TOS account, although, I use a paper account to follow my trades with options, most of them hybrid (indices hedged with etfs), I don't know other options software that allows beta weighting and this is the reason to use this.

 

I have 2 brokerage accounts,

 

one is IB , not much to say about them, one of the best brokers, but his TWS is quite clunky in order to trade with options spreads, I'm starting to get used to ONE software which now allows to send orders to IB via API, could be a great improvement because I love ONE software.

 

the other is Tradestation, I opened the account to get familiar with the easy langauge and systems programming  and the robust backtest utility, a little bit expensive but they are improving their optionstation platform quite a lot.

 

Regards and Happy New Year!

[Kim 7,499]

To me, the two most important things when selecting a broker are execution and commissions. It is true that TOS has more features than IB, but you can always use their features (by opening a paper account or real account with a small amount of money) but do a real trading with IB. Unless you can negotiate $1 per contract (and no trade fee) with TOS, the choice is obvious. And the money you save can be spent on trading software like ONE.

 

Think of it this way:

For a 10k account, using SO strategies, you will be trading around 250-300 contracts per month. With IB, your cost will be around $190-225, or ~2% of the account value. With TOS, assuming $1.50 per contract, it's DOUBLE. So the savings are $200+ per 10k of trading. For 50k account, that's $1,000 PER MONTH. ONE software costs around $600 PER YEAR. 

[equus 26]

I have accounts with 5 of the brokers above but my vote goes with eOption for Autotrading/Managed Accounts. IB+GAT is way too expensive.

 

I have autotrade accounts with eOption and TradeMonster. Both have been fine execution wise but eOption wins out on transaction costs.

 

IB without GAT would trump eOption, but that's still just a pipe dream at the moment.

Edited January 4, 2014 by equus

[Kim 7,499]

Doesn't eOption charge $2 extra per leg for autotrading?

[equus 26]

$2 extra per execution I believe.

[Kim 7,499]

Okay, even $2 per execution, if we have in SC around 17-20 executions (MIC: 4 open, 4 close, 3-6 adjustments, NTC: 3 open, 3 close), that would translate to $34-40, not too far from the $70 GAT charge.

[Marco 221]

I would agree that the 70$/month for GAT isn't that much if you consider that they get you IB's execution which I think is better than the likes of eoption (I think TOS is probably close to IB) if they (IB) improve execution by only 1c/lot than that 70$ pays of very quickly. Also GAT passes on volume discounts so if they get over 10k lots a month their fees drop to 0.50/lot which they pass on. Doing a bit of research on them people seem generally quite happy with their service. So I don't mind too much paying them 70 bucks. My issue is that they don't offer their service to non-US residents at this point (MIGHT come in H2/14)

Are they the only ones offering auto trading trough IB?

Also if the interest is big enough maybe Jesse would consider offering managed accounts trough IB too? Might solve the restrictions than non-US residents (I get the impression we have a few Canadians, and some people resident in Europe and Asia here) seem to have with GAT and TDAM.

[Kim 7,499]

GAT told us they plan to accept non-US residents in the second half of 2014. 

 

We currently have some concerns about GAT. 

 

First, they accept orders by email only, not phone. This could be an issue in fast moving markets.

Second, they might have issues trading units. They told us that they need the rolling/closing orders to specify percentages, not number of contracts. Does someone has experience trading units with them?

[pezzodefero 0]

Also if the interest is big enough maybe Jesse would consider offering managed accounts trough IB too? Might solve the restrictions than non-US residents (I get the impression we have a few Canadians, and some people resident in Europe and Asia here) seem to have with GAT and TDAM.

I quote Marco on this. IB managed could be the only solution for non Us member.

[Kim 7,499]

GAT hope to open to Canadians "in the near future" http://www.global-autotrading.com/autotrading-service/for-who.html. 

[Kim 7,499]

Update:

 

It is pretty clear (as expected) that most members are interested to auto-trade with GAT/IB and/or TOS.

 

At this point, we are still waiting for a response from TOS, and in parallel, we started to make arrangements with GAT. 

 

A question for those who have account with GAT: can you trade few services in one IB account linked to GAT account or you need a separate IB account for each service? 

[Marco 221]

Update:

 

It is pretty clear (as expected) that most members are interested to auto-trade with GAT/IB and/or TOS.

 

At this point, we are still waiting for a response from TOS, and in parallel, we started to make arrangements with GAT. 

 

A question for those who have account with GAT: can you trade few services in one IB account linked to GAT account or you need a separate IB account for each service? 

dont have an account with them but sound like you can trade as many newsletters as you like into one a/c

 

from their page:

 

"

Global AutoTrading can handle multiple accounts

It doesn’t matter how many investment newsletters you subscribe to, or how many brokerage accounts you have (perhaps you have a personal account, a corporate account, an IRA account); we can autotrade them all! Both equity and option recommendations are supported.

Global AutoTrading can handle many newsletter

If you're not sure which newsletter to choose, try several of them! You will get detailed portfolio reports that show how well each newsletter is doing."

[equus 26]

Just want to point out that TOS is closed to UK residents and has been for several years.

[Kim 7,499]

Okay, here is some more info regarding GAT (thanks Burt and Novita):

 

Global AutoTrading charges a flat per-service, per-account monthly fee for autotrading for accounts with less than $100k in equity:

The first service autotraded in an account is $70 per month. The second service is $30 each subsequent service $10 per month. 

If you have more than $100k with GAT the fees go up proportionally.  So if you have $150k in an account your fees are 150% of std – $105 for first service traded vs. $70, etc.

 

Source: http://www.global-autotrading.com/autotrading-service/fees.html

 

However, they charge per account, but they allow trading several services in one account, then there is no reason to open more than one IB account and link it to GAT. If you already auto-trade another service with GAT/IB, you can add Steady Condors and just specify number of units.

 

You cannot manually trade in the IB account linked to GAT, but GAT will provide you read only access at IB if you request it. So you need to dedicate an IB account to GAT autotrading, but can trade as many services in that account as you like as long as you have enough $.

 

"GAT does get a discount on base commissions as their volume increases through the month. This used to happen quite regularly by the 2nd – 3rd week of the month but I have not seen any reduction in commissions for several months.  I asked GAT about this and it is due to a lower volume of trade activity. So I would not assume volume discounts for the time being.

 

I have spoken with other vendors, and GAT has been steadfast in only accepting orders from vendors via email as I believe they have invested a great deal in automation based on the email containing certain specific trade information.   Other vendors have had to change the content of the notification email to satisfy GAT.  While I don’t have specific experience trading “units” with GAT, I have colleagues who do and I think I understand why you have to specify % vs. contracts.  GAT allows a client to trade fractional units, like 0.5 for services who have compounded their returns as often happens on Collective2 services. The math is simple if you say sell 50% but not so simple if you say sell 2 because I doubt they track how many are in a unit.  Just a guess but you could ask them or maybe they could simply disallow fractional units for your service."

 

We will not allow fractional units, but will specify both number of contracts and % for closing orders.

 

We are currently in process of setting up the rules and the format of the alerts with GAT. We hope to be able to launch auto-trading within the next 2-3 weeks. Still waiting to hear from TOS.