Privateer Regular  Posts: 85 Joined: 1/24/2005 Location: Germany  User Profile | Well, integrated trading with Interactive Brokers would be a good all around solution. They do offer more than 40 exchanges including US, Europe, Asia, Canada to trade from one single multi currency account. Stockoptions , futures and options on futures, stocks, ETF's , exchange trade closed end funds ( NYSE ). Their Trader Workstation can be linked already via active X, DDE with a lot of data / TA sources and there's an active usergroup offering many types of plugins and addons for trading an IB account through other interfaces. Dozends of professional and shareware applications can be found on their website under "Software" Best of all : commissions are really low. 0.01 USD/share for US Trades. 1$ min./trade. For trades 500 shares & up, they charge only 0.005 USD/share. Options start from 1.95, I think. With those commissions, and basket orders one can easily try to simulate a Folio - like strategy - with the difference that you still can go short, have access to margin and realtime trades - also through ECN's. I do about 400 - 500 roundtrips a year and have yet to find a better choice for the self directed trader. But It's not really the best choice for scalpers though. The wealth of ordertypes including such as conditional orders, Iceberg, Baskets, hidden , conditional , Market on open, Market on close, Volume wheighted average price etc. is very impressive and they continue to add new features to their TWS with almost every new release - which comes frequently about 1 in a month. I'm working with IB since almost 4 years now and have no reasons to complain. For more info : check www.interactivebrokers.com Newbies be aware: IB belongs to Timber Hill Group,Chicago, one of the biggest Market Makers in the futures and options market. Their typical clients are institutions around the world. Although Interactive was designed for the active retail trader, it's not the Charles Schwab type of broker or an E-Trade financial supermarket. IB is a plain direct access broker ( not to mix up with typical daytrading brokerages ) with very low commissions and a wealth of markets to trade. However, they'd be the last to hold your hand on other things than technical support for their Trader Workstation. You need to know what you do when trading with IB. Disclaimer : I'm not related to this company other than being a satisfied customer since many years. I'm not advocating daytrading ( which I don't do myself anyway ) nor do I give any advice on trading, brokerages and other financial subjects. If you decide to trade with IB, it's completely your own decision and risk. [Edited by Privateer on 2/17/2005 10:32 AM] | |
