Broker Transmit Recommended

C2
1

What’s the recommended broker for broker transmit of real account trades used to drive a system?
I normally use TS, but looks like I will need to set up a new account somewhere else as they are not an option for this.

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I have enjoyed Interactive Brokers, though it did take some time to get accustomed, coming from using Thinkorswim.

If you are going to run multiple strategies I would setup an account per strategy. Under the same IBKR login of course. Then I would make sure that you know it is difficult to deposit or withdraw from that IBKR account and keep the account balance similar to your C2 strategy. Therefore, I would have a non transmitting account that you can transfer money to in order to keep the Transmit account and C2 account in sync.

For example,

  1. You want to start a C2 strategy and charge $125 per month.
  2. You will want to start the C2 strategy with enough capital that the $125 is not to large of an expense on the strategies metrics. For example, if you start with $10,000 you are going to have an annual drag of about 15%. If you start with $100,000 you will have an annual drag of about 1.5%.
  3. If you start the C2 strategy with $100,000 in C2 money you will need $100,000 or so on the real IBKR account in order to control it effectively unless you use margin (be more aggressive) or leave lots of cash (be more conservative).
  4. Say you want to add more money to your real money account to be invested in the same way. You need to add it to a separate account if you want the trades to remain similar between the real and C2 accounts.
  5. You will have to put the money into another account to keep them in sync and place trades twice. Or if you don’t want to place trades twice open a Friends and Family advisor account or a professional advisor account where you can create model portfolios and allocated single trades to multiple IB accounts.

With some of my strategies I place trades using an advisor account at IB and have a model portfolio at IB. By placing the trade at the model portfolio level it will then distribute the trade to my IBKR accounts A and B. C2 will read trades of account A only and transmit it to subscribers. If I make a trade of 10 shares at the model account A may receive 5 of those shares, and a trade of 5 shares is what is transmitted to subscribers.

It was a lot of work to set it up, but it makes it so I can trade once rather than twice and don’t have to login to C2 to place trades etc.

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