Karl,
I made my first trade with them today.
I visited their Greenwich, CT office last week for a brief demo of their system, and to make certain their were living, breathing people behind that web site. I was treated well, and had a chance to talk about some issues. As of now, you cannot call an order in- period. I suggested they think seriously about changing that because of the inevitable technical failures of machines and the net. They have discussed it internally, but don't have a clear vision of the need, or the implementation details.
The guy I talked to was an ex specialist from the Philly exchange. He said most of upper people in the company have similar backgrounds.
I wanted my first trade to risk very little money, but try the system in a stressful environment, so I bought 100 shares of a $2 - $3 stock that had some heavy action today (ACEI, 32,000,000 shares), and another 100 shares a bit later. I got both lots at the bid and had confirmation in a few seconds. I did less well getting out, but that was because I traded like an idiot and pulled the trigger just as the market moved away from me (I only used limit orders). I lost money on the trade, but my total commission cost was $4. That softens the blow a bit.
One glitch however.. ACEI was very active on ISLD, but it did not show as trading on ISLD in the IB system. I called them and was told they are having some problems with ISLD sending them incomplete data. I have no reason to not believe them. They seemed pleased to be notified of the problem, and anxious to track it down.
The interface is .. well.. different, and their window chews up my entire 17" screen. Thank you, but I don't want to go to higher res to shrink the box. But you can slide the window to the side, or minimize it to get access to other windows. I'm using it with myTrack for data/charting. The human machine interface is unlike anything else I have ever seen, but order entry is efficient. It's going to take some getting used to. I had no problems running their window on the same platform with myTrack, web pages for an online broker account, and a couple of chat rooms on a PII 350 MHz 64Meg machine with a 56kb modem. (Yes, I do visit my Windows taskbar often.) You can download the software for free, but cannot do much more than look at it with the e-mini futures. I was unable to enter stock symbols in demo mode, but then I couldn't do it when I went live until I got a new version of the software, so I'm not sure if that limitation still exists.
The mechanism for directing orders to ECNs may not appeal to many who visit here, and it seems you can only place orders on ECNs that are already active in the stock, but I don't see that as undesirable. I think they only have access to ISLD, ARCA, and BTRD for now, but who uses them all? INCA would be nice, but for "ordinary" lot sizes the others are adequate, and there are NO EXTRA FEES for ECN trades. But, as far as I can tell, there is no pre/post market access to anything.
Behind the scenes is an automated routing system, something they have been doing for years in the options and futures markets. I haven't found out enough about it to compare it to ARCA or Cyber, but the proof is in the executions. I am hopeful, even excited about the possibilities. We'll see how it goes.
Dan |
