Anyway, with the three moving parts of IB NT and IQFeed, has anyone had any problems, such a freeze ups, trades not going through to IB, etc?

Using NinjaTrader Brokerage through Dorman Trading as the FCM: the all-in cost for ES is as low as $3.38 per round turn.

Our commission schedule is publicly posted here - NinjaTrader Futures Broker Commissions: Discount [AUTOLINK]All In[/AUTOLINK] Rates.

@oceanbreeze

From the tone of your post, you're probably already aware, but just sharing so others know because there are other numbers being advertised and I want to be fair to the users and other FCMs/IBs. The marginal cost for your FCM to execute a retail order is zero above some very small threshold. After all, how many hours do you actually spend talking to your reps at the FCM/IB and how much counterparty risk are they taking up especially if you're executing via a tried-and-tested software provider, e.g. CQG, TT etc.? This threshold is very small. So you have every right to shop around and not get fleeced.

As a non-member, I'd say you should expect no more than $2.82 per ES round trip all-in (including exchange, FCM commission and NFA fee) i.e. $0.25 FCM commission up to 10,000 contracts per month. Let me know if you need specific names.

It's only when you shift from a retail account to a bulge-bracket bank's FCM group within that ($0, $0.25] interval when it gets expensive and the fees take longer to go down, because the multiple reps (credit/risk, onboarding, sales) assigned to you and the 2-4 people monitoring your positions actually each earn $250k to $1.2m all-in compensation per year, and you're actually, truly, not worth their business if you're not paying certain fees at minimum.