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Got an email from OptionsHouse today saything they will now be offering Mini Options. Had never even heard of them before so I assume many others have not either.
Mini options are available on these five securities:
AAPL – Apple, Inc.
GOOG – Google Inc.
AMZN – Amazon.com Inc.
SPY – SPDR S&P 500
GLD – SPDR Gold Trust
One negitive I see right away is that commisions will be the same for regular options, at least for OptionsHouse, have not looked around at other brokers yet.
I believe that it is the same commission structure for all brokers. I won't use them for the average stock, but it might allow me to take advantage of GOOG and other options that have high priced options because of volatility
I have looked at commissions on TradeKing, IB and TDA. TradeKing isn't TOO bad, its their normal $5 starting ticket rate, TDA has the same $10 base rate so its pretty steep. IB's is the same but at only $1 ticket minimum they're about the only sane choice commission wise. I was kinda surprised at how good the volume was on the SPY7 chains for the first month but the spreads are still out there. I got a few nickel price improvements on SPY7 through IB smart the first couple days, but it hasn't happened once since!!
Tradestation just released 9.1 build 22. This is from the release notes: "In addition, the cost of entering mini option positions is approximately one-tenth that of full-sized options contracts."
Tradestation options are usually $1-- $2 round turn. So this means I should be able to do a round turn trade, on one of these mini contracts for 20 cents. Sounds almost too good to be true. I'll be trying this out very soon.
I've got the latest update installed, and still, I can't find these mini options.
I posted a note on the Tradestation board, and as of yet,
nobody else says they've got them working.
interestingly, IB also had the '7' symbology on option chain, then changed to having a 10/100/1000 multiplier and just showing root symbol. ToS shows '10 Mini' in red like weeklies.
The volume is much less than fullsize by several factors but I dont think this is very surprising. same with open interest
have you done a RT on mini options yet? did it really work out 20 cents? that would be significantly cheaper than IB so I'm also doubtful
No. I'm a day trader, so with no volume and huge spreads these mini options are useless to me.
You should call Tradestation to verify that low commission rate.
Be aware thought, that in order for me to use the Tradestation platform without incurring the $100 a month software fee, I must do 25 round turn options trades a month, which for me, is very easy to do. If I were trading just mini's I expect I'd need to do 250 round turns.
I was wanting to use the mini options as a low cost way to test new strategies, which of course won't work due to the low volume. So I'll continue to use the Tradestation "simulator" which is just paper trading, and is a very poor substitute for real trading. The quotes are real time, but the fills are always skewed to show much ore profit than you would make using real money.
understood. I currently trade through IB but was considering TS for better realtime data quality and secondly potentially the cost difference on minis but I am not doing lots of RTs. thanks for the info
