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Number of trades a day cutoff for ToS versus low commission setup
I hate paying the comission on ES especially when the fees are also factored in. Friday, I made $80 on ES and paid $40 in round trip commissions (and I have a lowered commission from TDAm).
At the same time I have never wanted to "make volume" for the broker. (even with rebates that is a sucker bet and weird ego trip to say I traded 500 contracts. BFD! How much did you actually made yesterday? Or better yet, last week? That should show you that nice 2-3 a day swings should be the norm, making 4-5 ES points each. However I cannot help but scalp in between swings. Did anyone figure out at what point is it work abandoning ToS and move to IB (or some other platform)? I hate TWS so I should get a better front end like Motiveware. I would say on average I might trade 20-50 round trips minimum (with scalps).
Now if I include the platform fee and data fees for futures, stocks, options than this whole thing becomes a bit murky for me. The alternative I keep trading options and ETF's (free commission).
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
TD Ameritrade is garbage. My executions with them were SLOW and sometimes non-existent at the open (freezing up and the order would just peg to the bid/ask and follow it up and down!).
You're already trading more than enough to justify a better commission. I'm with Tradovate, I pay $2400 a year for unlimited trades, but I pay exchange fees just like everyone else. The actual commission I pay? Only $0.08...so then add the exchange fee on top of that, for micro/mini... It's really affordable to scalp! Even when I "screw" up and overtrade a small size all day long, 1000 contracts, I still come out ahead. Granted that's not my goal to burn thru 1000 contracts and scrape by, but what I'm saying is that I don't get killed in commission on 300-400 trades! And that feels good for me, because at TD Amer I was racking up $4000 in 1 month of commission, and that was me BREAKING EVEN!
So I did the math and quickly switched and now I pocket that money that was being wasted. It was like instant profit in my pocket, paid for the membership in 1 month.
Micros are actually worth trading, because at ThinkorSwim (TD Amer), it was taking 6 TICKS on the Dow just to break even! No thank you!!!!!!!!! But I still love the TOS charts, altho they do sometimes freeze, at least over here. Not often, but it happened on mini Dow tonight. The price was changing but the 1m chart didn't move at all.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,384
Thanks Received: 10,206
At some point you can also consider getting a seat. Not sure what it is with CME/@ES but for NYMEX a seat is approximately $500 a month and I believe it lowers exchange fees from $1.50 to $0.70. So you only need to be doing 625 sides / 313 round turns a month for the seat to pay for itself. Unfortunately having a seat makes you a professional in the eyes of the exchange which can/does effect your data costs. But if your trading 100 round turns a day, the $3k+ exchange fee saving pays for a lot of data.
