If I try my best to follow the SO official trades with a 100k portfolio, how many option contracts I would transact per month?

[pboongird]

Hello all - I am new here and trying to set up a new option trading account so I can reduce the commission and fee which seems to be crucial to maximize your gain when trading with the SO strategy. Currently, after reading a few posts, I'm looking at either Tradier + ONE or + tradehawk. Now, I would be grateful if someone can share with me what would be the average number of contracts do you get to really transact on average (per month) for a 100k portfolio size so I can sign up with the right plan. Tradehawk has a current plan that if I trade more than 300 contracts per month, it would refund the $59 fee. Hence, I am wondering if I would be able to reach this threshold. I saw that the official SO trade are about 10-12 trades per months but the number of contracts is a big variable depending on the stock price and fill rate. I am also aware that bigger lot size could have a hard time getting order filled if blindly following the official trade. Can anyone share his/her experience? It would be great if you can give me a rough ratio of how much do you actually follow the official trades as well i.e. 500 contracts/month and about 50% of the time... 

[Bull3t007]

You will probably be much cheaper off using tradier and tradehawk, especially using the SO promotion. You may not follow all the trades but even if you follow 30%, with a 100k portfolio it will still be cheaper than Interactive. So if you follow around 70-90%  with unofficial trades you will save a lot of money. 

 

Platform wise I like IB better. 

 

Also: If you use SO promotion you pay a flat fee per month doesnt matter how many trades, so really should not matter.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Bull3t007

[pboongird]

8 hours ago, Bull3t007 said:

You will probably be much cheaper off using tradier and tradehawk, especially using the SO promotion. You may not follow all the trades but even if you follow 30%, with a 100k portfolio it will still be cheaper than Interactive. So if you follow around 70-90%  with unofficial trades you will save a lot of money. 

 

Platform wise I like IB better. 

 

Also: If you use SO promotion you pay a flat fee per month doesnt matter how many trades, so really should not matter.

Thank you Bull3t007 for your reply. I don't have IB. I am planning to create a new Tradier account and trying to decide whether to go with TradeHawk or ONE (both with Tradier). Tradier customer service just got back to me saying since I am a SO customer, I can get TradeHawk for $99/month while ONE platform it will cost me $95/month. To my understanding, if I decide to go with the TradeHawk and happen to trade more than 300 contracts, I will also get the $59 refund. So, I probably would go with TradeHawk if they can confirm back to me on that.

Regarding the platform, I already have been using TOS for years and I still have my account active there. So, I probably will just continue to use TOS for analysis and use Tradier + TradeHawk to entry order just to minimize the commission and fee. Unfortunately, the TD commission is still much higher even I tried to negotiate them down.

Cheers,

Luke

[Bull3t007]

11 hours ago, pboongird said:

Thank you Bull3t007 for your reply. I don't have IB. I am planning to create a new Tradier account and trying to decide whether to go with TradeHawk or ONE (both with Tradier). Tradier customer service just got back to me saying since I am a SO customer, I can get TradeHawk for $99/month while ONE platform it will cost me $95/month. To my understanding, if I decide to go with the TradeHawk and happen to trade more than 300 contracts, I will also get the $59 refund. So, I probably would go with TradeHawk if they can confirm back to me on that.

Regarding the platform, I already have been using TOS for years and I still have my account active there. So, I probably will just continue to use TOS for analysis and use Tradier + TradeHawk to entry order just to minimize the commission and fee. Unfortunately, the TD commission is still much higher even I tried to negotiate them down.

Cheers,

Luke

That's peanuts if you are trading a 100k portfolio. Look at what the best platform is for your trading. From what I understand One software makes you redirect to a browser if you place a trade. Tradehawk seems to be fully integrated. Makes the decision pretty easy. 

[pboongird]

Thanks again for your reply which helped confirm my decision. They just confirmed back to me about the refund if trading > 300 contracts. I will give TradeHawk a try  .

Cheers,
Luke

[Guest If you trade 300 contracts]

If you trade 300 contracts, you'll get $59 refund but you will have spent at least $105 in commission (300 * .35). You cannot combine the $59 refund offer with the SO $40 all inclusive commission offer. ONE is $95/month with all commission paid.
They also have execution without webbrowser interface now too which they said they are about to release.

[SBatch]

19 minutes ago, Guest If you trade 300 contracts said:

If you trade 300 contracts, you'll get $59 refund but you will have spent at least $105 in commission (300 * .35). You cannot combine the $59 refund offer with the SO $40 all inclusive commission offer. ONE is $95/month with all commission paid.
They also have execution without webbrowser interface now too which they said they are about to release.

TradeHawk/SO combined offer is $90 per month for unlimited commission free trades.

[sakura]

On 01/03/2018 at 3:45 PM, SBatch said:

TradeHawk/SO combined offer is $90 per month for unlimited commission free trades.

How does one apply for the 'TradeHawk/SO combined offer' priced at $90 per month? I searched the forum and TradeHawk's website but could not find it. @sbatch, could you point me in the right direction? Thx!

[SBatch]

1 minute ago, sakura said:

How does one apply for the 'TradeHawk/SO combined offer' priced at $90 per month? I searched the forum and TradeHawk's website but could not find it. @sbatch, could you point me in the right direction? Thx!

Simply email TradeHawk at info@mytradehawk.com and they will set it up with Tradier.

[sakura]

thank you @SBatch!

[pboongird]

On 3/2/2018 at 10:12 PM, SBatch said:

Simply email TradeHawk at info@mytradehawk.com and they will set it up with Tradier.

To clarify, I just got a reply from TradeHawk this morning that the $90/month or to be exact $89 per month ($40 So offer + $49 Tradehawk offer) promotion that SBatch got is no longer available. Now they (TradeHawk) only have the $59 per month Pro options for options trader. If that is combined with the SO offer ($40), it will be $99 per month for the unlimited commission-free option trading with Tradier Brokerage using TradeHawk platform. When I asked TradeHawk about the refund if trading more than 300 commissioned contracts (posted on the Tradier website), the guy referred me to Tradier as he didn't really have a clue on that. So, it clears to me that the refund is offered by the Tradier brokerage and has nothing to do with TradeHawk. Anyway, in sum, there is no more $89 per month. The current deal is $99 per month if one decides to go with Tradier + TradeHawk. Oh and you should just ignore the refund stated on the Tradier website as you would have to choose to trade 300 commissioned contracts in order to get that $59 refunded which makes no sense when you could trade the unlimited number of contracts commission free with the SO offer.

In the beginning, this is really confusing to me. So, I hope this explanation helps someone down the road...

[Sirion]

On 3/2/2018 at 9:10 AM, sakura said:

How does one apply for the 'TradeHawk/SO combined offer' priced at $90 per month? I searched the forum and TradeHawk's website but could not find it. @sbatch, could you point me in the right direction? Thx!

I think this got upped to $99/month, I

 

On 3/5/2018 at 11:04 AM, pboongird said:

To clarify, I just got a reply from TradeHawk this morning that the $90/month or to be exact $89 per month ($40 So offer + $49 Tradehawk offer) promotion that SBatch got is no longer available. Now they (TradeHawk) only have the $59 per month Pro options for options trader. If that is combined with the SO offer ($40), it will be $99 per month for the unlimited commission-free option trading with Tradier Brokerage using TradeHawk platform. When I asked TradeHawk about the refund if trading more than 300 commissioned contracts (posted on the Tradier website), the guy referred me to Tradier as he didn't really have a clue on that. So, it clears to me that the refund is offered by the Tradier brokerage and has nothing to do with TradeHawk. Anyway, in sum, there is no more $89 per month. The current deal is $99 per month if one decides to go with Tradier + TradeHawk. Oh and you should just ignore the refund stated on the Tradier website as you would have to choose to trade 300 commissioned contracts in order to get that $59 refunded which makes no sense when you could trade the unlimited number of contracts commission free with the SO offer.

In the beginning, this is really confusing to me. So, I hope this explanation helps someone down the road...

To hop on and confirm this, I switched to Tradier shortly after the beginning of the year and messaged support about getting the SO deals, and I currently pay $40/mo "SO Tradier Fee" and $59/month tradehawk fee" 

Annoyingly, they did not have a method to pay the fee directly (CC or ACH), it comes out of my IRA directly. Wonder if that's an SEC thing or they just haven't seen demand?