Replies to post #58664 on Savvy Trades and Investments

[Traderfan]

OT, IB and Ameritrade Zen

Level 1 was all I was using at E-Trade, I just need to see what the bid/ask is in Canada and use the exchange rate to make sure I'm not getting robbed by the arbitrage....it's usually just a fraction of a penny difference.

The good thing is that IB is letting you trade directly on the venture which is much better than to trade these stocks with the pink sheet symbols IMO.

I'm a slow and steady investor...although the ability to place iceberg bids for some of the smaller stocks I take large positions in would also be nice.

At IB you can't do that on pinks and otc stocks as a retail guy as far as I know, I have never tried it on venture stocks.

Really, I just need international quotes and a broker that allows me to trade in gray and dark stocks in the US....as I hear Ameritrade and Schwab are restricting access to pink sheets and the like.

You can't trade grey stocks online with IB. That's pretty bad. You could call in and try to get any fill if there is any bid around but it's a hassle. You do can trade dark pinkies at IB in general. I also have Ameritrade and I don't see them restricting access on a lot of pinkies. There are some yes that you can't buy because of DTC issues but that's the same with IB. And yes at Ameritrade you need to call in on some, at IB you can do all online if there is no DTC issue.

Maybe IB is the way to go....although the 0.005 per share commission can get expensive on some of the lower priced stocks I buy. Who do you use?

In general I would say IB is absolutely not the way to go with pennies. They have some absurd trading restrictions in place if you wanna buy/sell and the bid/ask is too far away or the last price is too far away, it's crazy. And the fee structure is not good if you trade larger positions and now they have additional exchange fees for sell orders in place which they now strap along to the customer so if you get partial fills on sells it get's costly.

I'm with IB and Ameritrade. The reason why I'm still with IB despite that I had hours of fights with them because of their absurd restrictions in place for pennies, is that I absolutely love the trading interface (excel like) which helps me since I trade such a big number of stocks at any given time and they are much better to observe on such an interface. Second reason is that as a european guy you can basically not open an account in most US brokers. Not with Etrade for example, and not with some others either.