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Looks like Swiss citizens are in luck with with opening an Tradier account. 

What trading platform are most of the Tradier users here actually using ? Tradiers own plattform ? OptionNetExplorer ? TradeHawk ?

Is live data also included in the flat fee package ?

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5 minutes ago, Daisy said:

 

Thank you. Is there any way to see real prices for filled option trades?  I looked at Time and Sales but I could only see quotes there and not the actual executed trades.  Something similar to the TOS table posted by one of the SO members?TOS.png.

 

Those look like the actual trades.

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11 minutes ago, Daisy said:

Yes. Would it be possible to see the actual trades in IB similar to TOS?

Last time i checked IB, i could not find something similar to the 'Option Times&Sales' from TOS which gives you all the option trades of the current day on a symbol.

On IB TWS, there is a 'Times&sales', but it's for a specific combo option, or individual options. Not all the option trades on that symbol.

This is why i keep TOS around along with TOS thinkback to see the historical option chains.

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11 minutes ago, Djtux said:

Last time i checked IB, i could not find something similar to the 'Option Times&Sales' from TOS which gives you all the option trades of the current day on a symbol.

On IB TWS, there is a 'Times&sales', but it's for a specific combo option, or individual options. Not all the option trades on that symbol.

This is why i keep TOS around along with TOS thinkback to see the historical option chains.

Thank you.  Unfortunately I’m unable to open TOS as I’m based in the UK.  Would help so much to see real trades executed.

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As i mentioned earlier i am a Fidelity user with a 10K account and was wondering how it compared to commissions paid if i was using Tradier. As no one replied i went ahead and created a spreadsheet which simulates the commissions paid for both Fidelity and Tradier accounts for a 10k, 20k, 30k and 40k account. 

 

The findings are based on the trades i made from Jan 1 2020 to Feb 12 2020, which follow 90% of the official trades posted. The trades i don't make are the ones where i am too far off from the posted entry price and avoid chasing. 

 

It assumes 0.35$ per contract with a 5.00$ minimum for single leg and 7.00$ minimum for multi leg with Tradier and a 0.65$ per contract using Fidelity. It of course does not take into account different fill prices that would've been obtained using each broker and assumes the Fidelity fills were obtained for both.

Here is a summary of the findings:

Commissions paid Jan 1 2020 - Feb 12, 2020:

 

10K account:

Fidelity: $328

Tradier: $652

 

20K account:

Fidelity: $657

Tradier: $682

 

30K account:

Fidelity: $986

Tradier: $744

 

40K account:

Fidelity: $1315

Tradier: $845

 

The trend continues with Tradier being more and more competitive as the portfolio size increases with the break even point being around the 20k portfolio size. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by slego

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3 minutes ago, slego said:

It assumes 0.35$ per contract with a 5.00$ minimum for single leg and 7.00$ minimum for multi leg with Tradier

What? Tradier has special offer for SO members - $10/mo for commission free option trading (so you pay only exchange and regulatory fees, around 11 cents per contract).

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2 minutes ago, slego said:

Wow, I had no idea, well i guess the analysis applies only then to without the special offer. 

$10/mo might be possible, but it limits you to the evry minimalistic Tradier website as a trading tool. I would suggest you assume $60/mo to include tradehawk. It's still an amazing offer.

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Is anyone aware if Interactive Brokers has any partners for UIs like TradeHawk with Tradier? 

I've personally decided to move away from Tradier, but man once you get used to a nice quick options UI it's frustrating to move back.

Or maybe IB has tools to let you set up faster trades yourself?

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@Sirion, did you have a chance to look at OptionNET Explorer? I use it with TWS all the time. ONE has a very user friendly GUI, they could do slightly better expiration cycle selector and adding some feature to modify existing Model position in a TOS way would be helpful. But besides than that, ONE's option chains are the most simple and intuitive that I've seen in option software packages (with the only exception of OptionVue).

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UPD: I looked at ONE's expiration cycle selector. Found that if I right click on it, ONE displays the full list of available terms, so we don't have to scroll back and forth looking for the particular cycle. I did not know of this feature existed. Nice!

image.png

 

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Anyone working with ONE. I have neve

33 minutes ago, Stanislav said:

UPD: I looked at ONE's expiration cycle selector. Found that if I right click on it, ONE displays the full list of available terms, so we don't have to scroll back and forth looking for the particular cycle. I did not know of this feature existed. Nice!

image.png

 

Stanislav, have You ever been able to use the monitor dock and monitor grid One features properly?. My open positions seem to show T=0 setup. Maybe my laptop time and/or zone should be set up differently?

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2 minutes ago, Javier said:

Anyone working with ONE. I have neve

Stanislav, have You ever been able to use the monitor dock and monitor grid One features properly?. My open positions seem to show T=0 setup. Maybe my laptop time and/or zone should be set up differently?

@Javier, First of all I use latest BETA version of ONE as I found it works better than a release version (for example I had a trouble placing VIX trades from ONE v1 - needed to switch to IB chains for this).

Next, I configured ONE to show only one expiration cycle at a time:

image.png

 

This way it is easier for ONE to meet IB's max number of realtime lines requirements. So ONE works much more stable with only one chain in GUI.

 

Finally, no, I do not now use Monitor Grid and Monitor Dock features, mostly because when I have a large number of positions opened, these features tend to quickly exhaust "IB max realtime lines" and start working incorrectly, so I need to restart ONE and TWS datafeed to fix it. I decided it is easier to just watch at "UNRLZD P&L" column on TWS Portfolio page. This works well for simple SO setups.

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@DaniloCastello. I don't know but I think using an Italian broker would be charging very high commissions. I know that is the case in Ireland where I live. I use IB and have been for the past 7+ years. They are not the cheapest but some US brokers that don't charge any commissions and just a relatively small monthly fee have not extended their services to Ireland. I know I can do Iron condors on  IB as a four legged trade. I hope this helps. There is a long string on the TOPIC of Brokers and commissions. If you haven't read that it would be worth a look.

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1 hour ago, luxmon said:

Looks like someone forgot to account for the leap year, oh my. 

image.png

This right here is why I'm so hesitant to leave Interactive Brokers in search of better commissions. "Move fast and break things" is a fine mantra for a startup, but I'm not trusting my trading account to it! This sort of development and QA failure is endemic of the attitude of RH, to say nothing of the infinite leverage debacle of last year. I don't have much faith that other fintech startups are any better when push comes to shove comes to panic. 

In my mind, the commissions I pay to IB give me peace of mind that one, their platform is robust (even if TWS looks terrible) and two, when the &#@$ hits the fan, I can call an actual human broker on a telephone who will follow my instructions to safeguard my account in a crisis. Robinhood has an email address. People who were positioned short lost hundreds of thousands of dollars today because there was no way to execute trades, and RH is about to be in a(nother) mountain of trouble.

 

Maybe I'm tarring an entire class of companies unfairly, but I personally prefer being able to sleep at night to saving money. Call it insurance.

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2 hours ago, DaniloCastello said:

thanks @mccoyb53 I lived in Dublin for 13 years....ah Copper Face Jacks.....I miss those nites out 🙂

anyway, regarding Interactive Brokers, will the money be held in a US account in USD? do they have special commission structures for SO customers? thanks 

Was never in Copper Face Jacks but spent over ten years in Dublin myself in college and University. Loved Dublin but as a student i couldn't afford that place. If you ever make it over to Ireland again let me know and we can relive the good times.

I opened a Euro account in London as far as I remember over 7 years ago. It was easy to do. I was with another American Broker at the time and IB saved me a huge amount on commissions. Even with IB lower cost commissions they do add up. In 2018 I made 109% for the year after commissions and before commissions it was 116%. Just saying that commissions are very important. See below a comment I made to @Krisbee over a year ago.

 

 

  On 1/10/2019 at 10:23 PM, krisbee said:

around 100$ per month is what they charge. so 1.2k a year. It's unbelievably cheaper than what I used to pay in IB. 

Think about this, IB commissions appx 3 cents getting in a RIC, 3 cents getting out of RIC, 6 cents gone. certain exchanges i don't exactly remember (something like phx..) are costlier. There are lot of advantages of IB, we cannot compare. BUT what we do with SO, in my opinion Tradier/tradehawk is good enough. Thanks to @SBatch for that.

I never had any fills problem with tradier. 

I had no idea it was that much a difference. I am resident in Europe. ( Ireland.) I hope I can use Tradier as a non US citizen. My commissions last year with IB was over 6,000$!!! So the savings would be massive for me. Many Thanks @Krisbee and @sBatch. On the positive side I made a 109% return on SO trades in 2018 including commissions so I am in no way complaining. Excluding commissions my returns would have been approx 116%.

 

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thank you @mccoyb53 for the invitation! i still have some apartments in Dublin, they are rented, so I have to come sooner or later just to hug them and check they are still there ahah

for what regards option commissions, i will definitely do as many SO trades I can (I have limited access to weekly options on stocks also with my italian broker), and then based on my results i will decide to open an account with IB, which is also good because I do want to keep some money in a foreign account even though this will force me do to an income return specific for trading options

so for us, non US residents, what would be the best brokers, aside from Interactive Brokers, that connect with ONE software (do you actually use an option software)?

 

thanks!

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  14 hours ago, DaniloCastello said:

thank you @mccoyb53 for the invitation! i still have some apartments in Dublin, they are rented, so I have to come sooner or later just to hug them and check they are still there ahah

for what regards option commissions, i will definitely do as many SO trades I can (I have limited access to weekly options on stocks also with my italian broker), and then based on my results i will decide to open an account with IB, which is also good because I do want to keep some money in a foreign account even though this will force me do to an income return specific for trading options

so for us, non US residents, what would be the best brokers, aside from Interactive Brokers, that connect with ONE software (do you actually use an option software)?

 

thanks!

@DaniloCastello. I think it would be best if we tranferred this discussion to the Brokers and Commisions topic. https://steadyoptions.com/forums/forum/topic/5-brokers-and-commissions/?page=20 but to answer your question. I still use IB because I am used to it and I like the mobile app a lot. I know @TrustyJules ( also in Europe) uses Tastyworks. I used Tastyworks for a while but never got around to comparing the commissions between IB and Tastyworks. When I used Tastyworks and IB together it was hard to keep up with both and a I lost money on Tastyworks because of been out of sight and out of mind as I didn't close my positions in time which stung me on a number of occasions.

 

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2 hours ago, TrustyJules said:

I only managed one of the CPB trades. The last one I couldnt get in:

image.png

Thanks @TrustyJules.I just worked out that I did 100 trades on CPB in total . Total commissions 43.97. Which is 44 cents per trade. Looking at yours above you did 80 trades for a cost of commissions plus fees of 41.3 or 51 cents per trade. I am not sure if I am comparing apples with apples though. I made a total profit of 427$ +9.6% on those trades including commissions so profit would have been 427 + 44 or 471 or 10.6% if I didn't have to pay commissions. A difference of 1% in profitability because of commissions. Not complaining but if anyone comes across a no commissions broker for Europe I am all ears!!! 

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3 hours ago, paul1971 said:

I have a new broker with commissions down to $0.20 with no data charge.  saves me a fortune.  I opened the account in the UK.  If you want more info send me a message.

Paul, care to mention the broker publicly so I could join too?

Cheers

 

 

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3 minutes ago, johnjames said:

I'm finding Interactive Brokers seems to be partially down.  I can't get live quotes on TWS.  Charts are ok, but only of course for the one ticker which was last on screen

TWS works fine for me. Try Ctrl+Alt+F in TWS to reinitialize IB datafeeds.

 

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I spoke to IB technical assistance and they are currently experiencing problems with their servers in Asia; I am in Sydney.  They have no estimated time as to when they will be up and running again.  I think i am lucky to not have any urgent positions to place or adjust 

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I have been with Interactive Brokers for a long time, but the fact that they don't offer OCA (one cancels another) orders for options combinations is becoming a dealbreaker. I have to babysit my trades when I could otherwise setup everything and step away.

I like that Interactive Brokers gets good fills, and has low margin rates. It's unfortunate that they have this limitation on order types.

Is anyone else using OCA for options combos at another broker they would recommend?

Don't want to trade one problem for another -- e.g. pickup the ability to do OCA option combos, but get crummy fills, have tough margin rates/calculations, or an unreliable platform.

Thanks :)

 

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19 hours ago, drcrc said:

 

I have been with Interactive Brokers for a long time, but the fact that they don't offer OCA (one cancels another) orders for options combinations is becoming a dealbreaker. I have to babysit my trades when I could otherwise setup everything and step away.

I like that Interactive Brokers gets good fills, and has low margin rates. It's unfortunate that they have this limitation on order types.

Is anyone else using OCA for options combos at another broker they would recommend?

Don't want to trade one problem for another -- e.g. pickup the ability to do OCA option combos, but get crummy fills, have tough margin rates/calculations, or an unreliable platform.

Thanks :)

 

@drcrc, Interactive Brokers does support OCA orders for option combinations. You can submit several combo orders (profit target, stop loss), and set "One Cancel Another Group \ Group Name" in the order ticket to the same group name for every order (for example, set OCA Group to "111" for both profit target and stop loss orders).

 

There is also "OC Grp" column in watchlist.

 

Note that you can only modify "One Cancel Another Group" in the order ticket before the order is submitted to the exchange. After order is submitted, with empty "One Cancel Another Group", you can not longer modify this field. Slightly inconvenient, but that is how it works.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Stanislav said:

@drcrc, Interactive Brokers does support OCA orders for option combinations. You can submit several combo orders (profit target, stop loss), and set "One Cancel Another Group \ Group Name" in the order ticket to the same group name for every order (for example, set OCA Group to "111" for both profit target and stop loss orders).

 

There is also "OC Grp" column in watchlist.

 

Note that you can only modify "One Cancel Another Group" in the order ticket before the order is submitted to the exchange. After order is submitted, with empty "One Cancel Another Group", you can not longer modify this field. Slightly inconvenient, but that is how it works.

 

 

Jup and its super extensive. I wish tradier had the same. 

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16 minutes ago, CJ912 said:

I use Tradier with Tradehawk and can actually set OCO orders. It's probably not as extensive as the IB version, but it gets the job done.

It doesn't work well with hedged straddles though. At IB I used to put a sell GTC order for the whole straddle plus strangle with 15% target and next to that two individual orders for the short call/put with order to close for 0.05. If one of the three executed, the rest would cancel. Whereas now with tradier I can only put one order because you can't have two seperate orders for the same leg. Emailed them about it but they say its just the way it is, incredibly unlogical. 

 

So lets say you have one short call position (-1)

 

And one order for buy to close (+1)

 

You can't have another buy to close (+1). 

 

I don't understand the logic as the worst case scenario would be that both orders go through and you will just be long one call. No risk for the brokers whatsoever. 

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2 hours ago, Stanislav said:

@drcrc, Interactive Brokers does support OCA orders for option combinations. You can submit several combo orders (profit target, stop loss), and set "One Cancel Another Group \ Group Name" in the order ticket to the same group name for every order (for example, set OCA Group to "111" for both profit target and stop loss orders).

 

There is also "OC Grp" column in watchlist.

 

Note that you can only modify "One Cancel Another Group" in the order ticket before the order is submitted to the exchange. After order is submitted, with empty "One Cancel Another Group", you can not longer modify this field. Slightly inconvenient, but that is how it works.

 

 

Thanks @Stanislav but I don't see any reference to OCA group in the Strategy Builder, nor the order confirmation box after that. I only see OCA in Order Management which allows for simple option legs, not combinations as far as I can tell.

Incidentally, before posting my question in the forum here, I reached out to Interactive Brokers and they told me there is no OCA for combinations. 

If you have a screenshot of how you do it, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again :)

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5 minutes ago, drcrc said:

Thanks @Stanislav but I don't see any reference to OCA group in the Strategy Builder, nor the order confirmation box after that. I only see OCA in Order Management which allows for simple option legs, not combinations as far as I can tell.

 Incidentally, before posting my question in the forum here, I reached out to Interactive Brokers and they told me there is no OCA for combinations. 

If you have a screenshot of how you do it, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again :)

1) https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/tws/usersguidebook/specializedorderentry/create_a_combination_order.htm

2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=4suN5RPR6ow&feature=emb_title

Don't use mosaic. Use the traditional TWS tab. 

Enter the combo in one of the rows. The row under you want to put the other combos or legs. 

It is definiteley possible as I used the feature all the time, can't imagine they have removed it. 

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      The impact of commissions on your results can be astonishing.
       
      This excellent article by Business Insider is asking the right questions (and also answering some of them):
       
      When you pay commission fees for online stock trades, where does that money go? Do you get better execution by paying $9.99 to TD Ameritrade than by paying $1 to Interactive Brokers? How much better? Enough to justify the difference in price?
       
      Their conclusions:
      At least 17 million investors overpaying for online brokerage Only 12% of commission fee is used for trade execution at top brokerages Over $1.8 billion per year wasted on unused premium services Lets analyze one specific month, January 2015, and see how different commissions structure can impact the returns of our SteadyOptions model portfolio.
       
      SteadyOptions $10k model portfolio traded 228 contracts in January. If you paid $0.75/contract with no ticket fee, you spent $171 on commissions, which is 1.7% of your portfolio value. While not cheap, but considering the fact that we produced 20.7% ROI in January (12.4% return on the whole account assuming 10% allocation), it is completely reasonable.
       
      However, if you had a ticket fee of $8, in addition to $0.75/contract, you would pay $427 in commissions, more than double. In this case, your returns will be reduced by 4.3%.
       
      This will make HUGE difference in the long term. To see how huge, I went to pro-trading-profits.com, a third party website that tracks performance of 400+ newsletters. I clicked on SteadyOptions performance report and played with different parameters. Using the $0.75/contract with no ticket fee, a $10,000 portfolio would produce $35,693 gains since inception. Adding $8 ticket fee to each trade would reduce the gains to $23,869.
       
      The impact of the ticket fee is especially significant if you have relatively small account.
       
      Of course commissions is only part of the whole package. Other factors include tools, platform, customer service etc. Barron's publishes a comprehensive brokers review every year. Here is the last one. Interactive Brokers (IB) was ranked #1 by Barron's third year in a row. This is the broker I personally have been using for the last 7 years and I'm very happy.
       
      Barron's mention that "IB offers a lot more support to new clients, including individuals, especially those with larger accounts. Yes, using the word "support" in the same sentence as Interactive Brokers (without the modifier "dismal") is a change for us, but the firm has clearly made this a point of focus."
       
      Their conclusion:
       
      "Interactive Brokers continues to have extremely competitive pricing, and the lowest margin fees of any broker in our survey. You may incur some data fees, but the firm takes care of any options-exercise costs, which can generate unexpected fees at many other brokers."
       
      On the open section of our forum, we have couple very useful discussions about brokers:
       
      Brokers and commissions
      Interactive Brokers tips, tricks, webtrader etc.
       
      There is a consensus among our members that IB and TOS by TD Ameritrade offer the best combination of commissions, platform, and execution. If you decide to go with TOS, I highly recommend that you negotiate a commissions structure that does not include a ticket fee.
       
      Here are couple more good articles worth reading:
       
      The Truth Behind Broker Commissions - Learning Markets
      Comparison of online brokerages in the United States
      Relative Importance Of Options Brokerage Fees
       
      For Canadian traders, here is an excellent study on the commissions schemas offered by Canadian discount Brokers.
    • By Kim
      I tried to to buy 1 Apr SPX 1300 put and getting an error message that I have insufficient margin. The message indicates that the margin will increase by 53,985 (see attached image).

       

      I opened a ticket with IB. Their response was:

       

       

       

      I couldn't believe this, but the fact remains.
    • By Bschulz
      I'm opening an account at IB and wondering if there is a promotion code or partner code to use for SO members?
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