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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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In another post I asked for opinions on those who have used MB Trading. After really delving into MB's pricing structure and comparing it to my current broker, Ameritrade, I was suddenly slapped up-side the head with a cold hard reality. In the past two years I have made about 2,300 trades with Ameritrade at $11/trade. It's not exact, but flipping through several pages of past AMTD trades, I think I average about 300 shares per trade. I don't trade penny stocks and rarely any stock under $5. Plus, I often scale into and out of stocks in 100/200 share pieces. Therefore, if during the past two years I had been using MB the entire time using their "plan A" commission structure, I would have saved....drum roll....approximately $18,400!
For those of you who have similar trading habits and are still using brokers like Ameritrade, Etrade, or Schwab, do yourself a favor and strongly consider MB Trading or another reputable broker with similar pricing. Everything I have learned about MBT sounds good to me: Great commission charges, direct access, no exta fee for phone orders, integrates with Medved Quote Tracker, exports to Gainskeeper, and no inactivity fee. What it lacks are bells and whistles, i.e. banking, etc. And if I ever become wealthy with a 6 digit account and start making lots of multi-thousand share trades, I can change over to their "plan B" and pay a flat 9.95/trade.
Sorry if I come across as a spokesman for MBT, but I am truly excited about opening an account with them soon. I started looking for another broker earlier this week when ET announced buyout offer to AMTD...now this morning AMTD says not for sale, lol. My only worry is that the one dollar trades (for 100 shares) will tempt me to try daytrading and/or change my overall style such as too much churning, sloppiness, etc.
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Registered User
Joined: 10/7/2004
Posts: 2,126
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Petry you may want to review your pricing with MBtrading. You got it wrong. Plan B is not a flat 9.95 you also have to add from .0020 to .0030 for routing fees. Take a 10,000 shr trade and you are way behond the 10.99 from ameritrade.
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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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Ah, the devil's in the details; thanks for info. If I ever get to where I'm trading multi-thousand share blocks fairly often, that will mean my account is much larger and I won't worry too much about commission prices. And I always have the option of using my Etrade account for an occasional large block trade.
I'm still kicking myself for not seeing the light with my current trading style and account size. that extra $18k means that I'm actually a better trader than I thought...it would have added very significant profits to my current shade tree account.
By the way BigBlock, what broker do you use? Thanks.
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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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BibBlock, it's been over a month since my reply to your reply in this thread. After even more real hands on with MB Trading since I opened the account, I decided to take a different angle to my initial reply above and offer a stronger counter argument to your point. Your point makes a lot of sense on the surface for those like you making mulit-thousand share trades on a regular basis when you said, "Plan B is not a flat 9.95 you also have to add from .0020 to .0030 for routing fees. Take a 10,000 shr trade and you are way behond the 10.99 from ameritrade."
Okay, I've been trading my new MB Trading account alongside my AMTD account (both DSL and dial-up) and at least in my case as it appears on my trading screen, MB is faster than AMTD in trade execution speed. I also just read Barron's yearly detailed online broker survey, and it concurs with my assumption that direct access MB Trader is faster in exectution than web based AMTD. With a 5 being perfect, MB ranked first out of all brokers tested in that category, a 4.7, while Ameritrade Apex finished in the middle at 3.8.
Now let me back up a bit and put it all into perspective: If trading big blocks, what broker really is the cheapest in trade commissions? I say in the hands of an alert trader a direct acess broker such as MB Trading may actually be cheaper than AMTD or other web based brokers. I'll take your example of 10,000 shares using MB's $9.95 + routing fees of .0025. That scenario would cost me $35 using MB. I THINK a trader using MB would have a pretty good chance, on average, of beating an Ameritrade user by at least ONE PENNY on the trade. If so, in the 10,000 share example, an Ameritrade user would end up paying $111 vs. the $35 for the MB user. An argument to that would be if a limit order of same price is used for each broker, then AMTD wins. But MB Trading prides itself on executing at prices better than the limit on occasion, so maybe a draw in that case? Cheers!
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Registered User
Joined: 10/7/2004
Posts: 2,126
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Petry - let me tell you on block trading on a stock that is moving up - even if not moving very fast you do not pay the bid price, you pay the ask price; that is if you really want to play the stock. At the bid you will never get in.
So is either market price or asked price. Your theory will not work for block trading.
Like I said before MB is slightly superior in speed to ameritrade when trading under 1000 shrs, not really noticeable so in blocks of 500shrs and above.
If you really like MB stick with them - they are great.
Being confortable, and familiar with your broker is very important.
good luck.
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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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BigB as always you make good counter arguments. Well, since ET and AMTD will not merge I'm stuck with three brokers. I will definitely keep my AMTD account and most likely gradually move out of ET as I sell long term positions. Three brokers is one too many, but two is fine. One thing really good about AMTD Apex is the streaming live news and backfill of intraday charts (which MB and ET both lack). And with Quote Tracker the two accounts of AMTD and MB are seamless, i.e. I can independently select streamer feed, backfill, news, etc. A good example and reason for having two brokers hit home a couple weeks ago for me. My MB streamer feed went down for a few minutes(could still trade) so in QT I simply selected the AMTD streamer feed:)
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