Hi,
Brown is probably using Knight-Trimark for their autoex clients. This is by far the fastest way to trade, until NITE cuts off your access (this only happens if you consistently make money). Datek will likely hit the nearest Island order or something.
I don't think CyberX is a replacement to an online broker, in that it doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to learn of all the direct execution methods and their impacts.
The CyberMarket orders are usually fine if the stock isn't moving. If the market is moving against you, though, they're deadly. They often get trapped in SelectNet and SOES purgatory, as the market makers move their quotes away from the automatically-generated preference order, which has to wait 30 seconds to expire.
For stop-loss orders, I usually make sure and place them at an odd price, somewhere after the major support I was betting on breaks, and I use SOES for the order. If your Internet connection is good enough, CyberX can hit the SOES offer faster than any humans, and you'll be first in line. CyberMarket will spend precious time checking who's there, trying to preference them etc. I've never been kept in a stock past my stop using this method (although I have been prematurely stopped out as the market blew folks like me out only to return to the original direction!).
My advice; learn everything about all the execution methods, and pick the one that suits the situation. For liquid stocks, I often use CyberExchange ECN -- it works quite well. For what would be a "market order" to join a fast moving market, I usually use ARCA and place a limit buy with the limit a dollar *above* the current market. I pay the price. For illiquid and slow-moving stocks, I check what market makers are at the inside and preference them by hand (note: you need a third-party Level-2 data provider to do this).
Personally, I find ARCA does a much better job of automatic order routing than CyberExchange. However, you need to do the reading to find out how they each work.
Cheers,
Simon. |
