I am confused as to the total order fees and commissions that one will encounter while autotrading.
Are the fees shown in your web site section AutoTrade "Gen3 Auto Trade Fees and Costs" in addition to the brokers regular account commissions?
For MB trading "stocks" do I pay:
auto trading fee (.01/share additional broker commission + 99/mo lisc.) + 4.95/order MB regular broker commission?
or do you mean C2 autotaders get a special rate from MB of .01/share total commission?
I have an account with MB and the only commission schedule is a flat $4.95/order.
Frank -
Yes, I need to correct the text on the C2 screen describing MB Trading. C2 has worked out special pricing for C2 customers that want to use MB Trading with smaller accounts, but your need to ask for it.
Here’s the basic deal: If you sign up for C2 AutoTrade using MB Trading, you’ll automatically get their list rate: $4.95 per stock trade. This is a very good rate, obviously, especially when you compare it to other C2-compatible brokers.
However, there are some cases in which even this $4.95 per-trade cost makes things difficult. For example, imagine a case where you want to trade a system that makes lots of stock trades every day, and you only want to deploy a modest amount of capital to the system. In this scenario, even $4.95 per trade can seem like a lot, if you are executing dozens of orders each day, and if the number-of-shares traded for each position is relatively modest.
For this scenario, you’ll want to ask for the “special” C2 pricing, only available to C2 customers. This pricing is $0.01 (that’s a penny) per share, with a $1.00 minimum per order. This makes the trading of systems with lots and lots of simultaneous positions more manageable, even when you are only trading, say, 100 shares of stock for each order.
(Of course, as the number of shares you trade for each order increases, then the $4.95 flat ticket charge makes more financial sense. You’ll need to run the numbers to see if the system you are trading, and the size you want to trade at, would do better under the $0.01 per share or $4.95 flat per-trade charge.)
If you want to use the special $0.01 per share ($1 minimum per order) pricing, you’ll need to write to your friendly Customer Service rep at MB Trading, telling him or her what you want. You can only set this up on the entire account. That is, you can’t have one pricing on some trades and one pricing on other trades.
Regardless of which pricing you choose ($4.95 per trade or $0.01 per share), this commission is paid entirely to MB Trading, and neither C2 nor its corporate affiliates is compensated in any way for these trades. Instead we charge a flat monthly fee for Gen3 AutoTrading for Stocks and Options. This is the same regardless of which broker you use. It is $67 per month with prepay discount. (This is only for stocks or options. No monthly fee is charged for forex or futures.)
Hope this long post helps to clarify.
Matthew
Thanks Mat. Now I understand.
