Commissions and fees

[poczos 1]

Hi guys,

 

I've just sent a message to DAS to inquire but wanted to ask here as well in case somebody has the relevant info.

This morning while I was trading I was monitoring my fees and commissions under Account Report. Every ticket cost $1.00 when you place the trade.

I finished (over)trading at 66 tickets and my commission was $66.00. To much of my surprise when I looked at my account a few minutes ago to recap the day I saw that the commission was $190 or so. I think the fees did not change.
Can anybody explain why it changed during the day? It's very frustrating that I couldn't rely on the information DAS provided when I finished trading this morning.

Thanks a lot,
Zsolt

[Guest Sam]

Hello it all depends upon your share size,usually it would cost you $1 per ticket but if your size is much then it would cost you 0.0035 c per share I think! 

[poczos 1]

Hi Sam,

Yes I checked out the fixed and tiered structure on IB's website. What surprised me was that the commission changed hours after I stopped trading.

[[email protected] 0]

That happened to me too. I was up +685 after Day 1, and then went I came in to today, my buying power had only increased by $~200.Today’s P/L was $935.00, let’s see what my BP says tomorrow

[poczos 1]

I asked DAS. This was the response:

Thank you for contacting us. I am sorry but there were a few modifications done on some of our deals. You are currently being charged $0.0035 per share with $2.95 minimum.

So basically they tripled our papertrading minimum commission without saying a word...

 

[christophersteven 0]

On 3/26/2019 at 6:20 PM, poczos said:

I asked DAS. This was the response:

Thank you for contacting us. I am sorry but there were a few modifications done on some of our deals. You are currently being charged $0.0035 per share with $2.95 minimum.

So basically they tripled our papertrading minimum commission without saying a word...

 

hopefully thats not what IB is actually charging right? DAS just did this for the trading challenge? Part of doing the trading sim challenge was to get a handle on IB fees. 

[poczos 1]

Hopefully.

This is what I found so far:
https://investors.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1590

If I'll consider DAS and IB I'll call both to get clarification. It is confusing that IB charges the commission but DAS tripled the amount of said commission.
I haven't found a lot of clear info on this to be honest.

I've been playing with TOS and it's as clear as it gets with them... Apparently it's just not suited for fast scalping.
 

[WilliamH 66]

Thanks for identifying this @poczos @christophersteven @[email protected] 

Lets clear this up for all the challenge participants.

Live Trading - Brokers charge commission and fees. Trading software platforms, such as DAS never charge fees or commissions. DAS tries to pass through the fees as a representation of what your fees will most likely be based on the broker you choose, but since different brokers charge different commission structures, DAS must be programmed in different ways depending on the broker used. 

IB only has two commission structures,

Tiered and Fixed.

Tiered is $.0035/share (minimum commission of $.35/trade) + other regulatory fees and ECN fees.

Fixed is $.005/share (minimum commission of $1.00/trade) + other regulatory fees but NO ECN fees are ever charged

You might choose either option depending on your trading style, but that is a discussion for separate time.

Interactive Brokers does not have a $2.95 minimum on any of their commission structures, but other brokers do.

 

Now onto the BBT challenge

Paper Trading/BBT challenge - Since this was our first ever challenge, and we did not in theory pretend that everyone was on one broker, we had a slight issue with the fees in the beginning.  Remember DAS doesnt charge commission or fees, but since this is a challenge and their is no broker we are linked up to for this paper trading, any of the fees are only representations of what Broker X might charge.  Since not everyone uses IB we didnt choose IB structure. We will make sure to make this more clear moving forward in future competitions so it doesnt cause confusion.

Hope this makes sense and please ask any follow up questions if anything is unclear.

[poczos 1]

Great explanation, thanks for taking the time to post it! @WilliamH

They way you explained it all in detail is very clear and even more useful! No more questions left on the subject.

Edited March 30, 2019 by poczos