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Equities are a regulated market. Slippage and liquidity are not going to vary much at all (barely any) because it is a centralized market. It is not spot forex. It would only vary due to latency between you and your broker, so for example a broker based on west coast vs east coast - you might see a small difference in fills.
Interactive Brokers is one of the best equity brokers and the only one I've traded equities on in the last 5 years or so. I'm sure others can make other recommendations.
I've used Interactive Brokers in the past for swing trading stocks & ETFs but in my case IB commissions ($0.01 / share) are not competitive with BMO Investorline ($9.95 flat commission no matter what quantity for active traders or relatively large accounts).
You're right--it's 1/2 cent for US stocks--which means IB commission costs on US exchanges don't exceed BMO costs until we're trading over 2000 shares. I should therefore clarify I tend to trade more shares than this and typically on CDN exchanges where the commission is 1 cent / share.
@Big Mike, I will likely be opening a small account (kind of like a retirement account, but allowing for active management of funds) with a broker, and from what I have seen, IB seems very good for stocks. This will be a totally separate account from my day trading futures, and will only be used for buying/selling ETFs like SPY, and maybe the occasional individual stock. I will manage it as an investment vehicle, not for day trading.
A couple of questions:
1) If it's not too personal, do you have a cash or a margin account for equities? If it's margin, do you get to set your own margin, or is it fixed? Since PDT rules do not apply to cash accounts, that is somewhat of a consideration for me but I do not plan on making more than a few trades a month so I don't think it would apply anyway.
2) Have you considered (or are you already) trading in a Roth IRA? I know that penalties exist if gains are withdrawn during the first 5 years, but I'm not too worried about that, as this would be more of a retirement vehicle. If this is meant to be used for actual investing, can you think of a disadvantage to trading in a Roth IRA? As far as I can tell, withdrawals after age 59.5 should be the same as with any Roth IRA, namely, tax free.
3) When taking trades with IB, are you usually using IQFeed for the data and then routing the order through IB?
4) Using IB, what is the bottom line cost including all exchange/IB fees to trade 1 share of SPY?
1) I am using margin, whatever their standard ratio is.
2) My IRA is not at IB. It's at OptionsXpress. As for Roth vs Traditional, plenty of good articles out there to help you decide, it all depends on your personal situation and where you see your tax rate being at retirement age vs now.
3) Yes, I use IQFeed for all data and charts. Even my DOM is IQFeed, but Sierra places the trade thru IB.
4) It would depend if you are using traditional flat rate or cost plus. I am using flat rate, there is a good page here: Commissions
Short answer, $1.00 is the minimum fee per, although I am speaking just based on that chart because I've never actually traded 1 share of SPY.
