JD,
I'm not really sure where you're going with this but I'll add my 2 cents anyway. Many people do not factor in all the costs of trading. They merely look at how much a specific trade made or lost. They fail to include all the other expenses that must be added up before one can truly say they are ahead of the game. I was with a daytrading firm that charged a base $10 per ticket plus as much as $2.50 for using SNET or as little as $.50 for SOES. Can't get much lower than that. Regardless of how low the fee is, if there are ten trades every day, you must consider commission rates because they eat into any profit you manage to squeeze out of the market. Add $250 every month for data fees plus computer costs, rent, food, etc. and you find that you actually start each month way behind even before the first trade is made. I've decided to give up daytrading because I just don't have what it takes. Goodbye to the data fee, at least, but all the other expenses are still there. Trading must be treated like any other business. Expenses must be as low as possible if there is any chance of turning a profit. On the other hand, I'm sure there are those who can turn a profit even with $20 ticket fees, hell, $150 ticket fees. These low fees are extremely recent, as we all know, and people have been making and losing money even with stupidly high fees from full service brokers.
I agree it would be nice if all brokers lowered their fees, though I'm not sure that MBTrading offers the lowest cost, if that's what you're looking for. I don't think traders have much leverage, though, until they're doing enough tickets that they already qualify for the lowest price, or enough traders go bankrupt and thus force brokers to compete for a dwindling supply of customers. This will probably happen eventually when the market turn bearish, but undercapitalized brokers will probably also be taken down. So, the question remains, how much does a broker need to charge so that they attract customers but also remain solvent? The broker charging the lowest fees MAY not be around in a year or two. Frankly, I think there are plenty of brokers around right now so that just about everybody can find a price/service ratio the suits them. I really wonder how many daytraders could succeed even if their tickets were free. Conversely, brokers are always sitting in the cat-bird seat and always have been. As long as they have customers their success is assured. "Where Are All the Customers' Yachts?" was written back in the twenties (or thereabouts), so customers have been getting fleeced long before there was online trading. For those knowledgeable enough to make the market work for them, trading has never been cheaper. For everyone else, it's really just more of the same. And, really, the difference in price between Cyber and MBT isn't going to be the deciding factor in anyone's success. I think if you could get an overview of the traders at both, you'd find that there's a fairly equal percentage who are losing their money.
Regards,
Paul Kaz
|
