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Right along with charles schwab [0]. Amazing what a little competition from Robinhood can do. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/01/charles-schwab-is-eliminati

by mrep 7y ago

Right along with charles schwab [0]. Amazing what a little competition from Robinhood can do. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/01/charles-schwab-is-eliminating-online-commissions-for-trading-in-us-stocks-and-etfs.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/01/charles-schwab-is-eliminatin...

dang 7y ago
Discussed a couple day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21136348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21136348
dharma1 7y ago
Anybody have a Charles Schwab account in the UK? I've been looking for a low fee brokerage who offer a business account in the UK. So far only IB seems to tick the box.
amanaplanacanal 7y ago
And TDAmeritrade.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
basch 7y ago
Id venture robinhood is getting a little too much credit here. The order this happened in was Interactive Brokers, Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Etrade. They were obviously all prepared to do it in the event one of them went for it. Interactive Brokers did this more to give themselves a competitive edge over Schwab, TDA, and ETrade. That lasted about a day.
- bobcostas55 7y ago
  Kinda sucks that IB started a whole new (gimped) service for this. I want my TWS and API access, why can't they let me choose whether I want to pay commissions or let them sell my order flow and do the trades for free?
  - sitzkrieg 7y ago
    if it makes you feel better, their API is text based and doesnt use message delimiters, so update TWS with great care, because a single new character off in any message will break your entire stream of data, order execution(and especially combo) entries, etc.. They also have some of the worst real time market data available (intraday), absolutely horrendous historical market data request rate limiting and more. Great brokerage, but if you're interested in API for more than orders I recommend other services for realtime data
    - matorl 7y ago
      Who do you recommend for an API for more than orders? Just yesterday I was looking at IBs data streams to figure out if they give me what I need without hitting rate limits.
      - sitzkrieg 7y ago
        depends - if you're doing aggressive intraday trading based on realtime data (tick or so), i can recommend many depending on need and cost, email me for details. As someone who used to trade for a living with a technical bent, Im passionate about it if you just need reliable daily without 1440 minute bars going wack IB is probably ok
- windexh8er 7y ago
  I don't think so. None of these brokers would have gone down this path without the pressure that zero fee brokers have been bringing. It was easy to call that ETrade was cornered to follow after Schwab announced last week [0]. And like I mentioned in another comment: just because Schwab and ETrade have better tooling and many more features that doesn't always matter for some. I still use tools outside of ETrade and for certain trades will continue to run them through Robinhood. Now there's less incentive though, which is great for me as the consumer. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142786
  - basch 7y ago
    It was a race to the bottom, it may have taken longer, but they all would have been shaving a dollar off at a time till somebody hit zero.
brobinson 7y ago
It was Interactive Brokers that forced Schwab's hand.
all_blue_chucks 7y ago
The first to offer (limited) free trades was Zecco, which later became TradeKing. I think RobinHood was the first to sell the rights to trade against their users, though.

by mrep 7y ago

dang 7y ago

Discussed a couple day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21136348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21136348

dharma1 7y ago

Anybody have a Charles Schwab account in the UK? I've been looking for a low fee brokerage who offer a business account in the UK. So far only IB seems to tick the box.

amanaplanacanal 7y ago

And TDAmeritrade.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

basch 7y ago

Id venture robinhood is getting a little too much credit here. The order this happened in was Interactive Brokers, Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Etrade. They were obviously all prepared to do it in the event one of them went for it. Interactive Brokers did this more to give themselves a competitive edge over Schwab, TDA, and ETrade. That lasted about a day.

bobcostas55 7y ago
Kinda sucks that IB started a whole new (gimped) service for this. I want my TWS and API access, why can't they let me choose whether I want to pay commissions or let them sell my order flow and do the trades for free?
- sitzkrieg 7y ago
  if it makes you feel better, their API is text based and doesnt use message delimiters, so update TWS with great care, because a single new character off in any message will break your entire stream of data, order execution(and especially combo) entries, etc.. They also have some of the worst real time market data available (intraday), absolutely horrendous historical market data request rate limiting and more. Great brokerage, but if you're interested in API for more than orders I recommend other services for realtime data
  - matorl 7y ago
    Who do you recommend for an API for more than orders? Just yesterday I was looking at IBs data streams to figure out if they give me what I need without hitting rate limits.
    - sitzkrieg 7y ago
      depends - if you're doing aggressive intraday trading based on realtime data (tick or so), i can recommend many depending on need and cost, email me for details. As someone who used to trade for a living with a technical bent, Im passionate about it if you just need reliable daily without 1440 minute bars going wack IB is probably ok
windexh8er 7y ago
I don't think so. None of these brokers would have gone down this path without the pressure that zero fee brokers have been bringing. It was easy to call that ETrade was cornered to follow after Schwab announced last week [0]. And like I mentioned in another comment: just because Schwab and ETrade have better tooling and many more features that doesn't always matter for some. I still use tools outside of ETrade and for certain trades will continue to run them through Robinhood. Now there's less incentive though, which is great for me as the consumer. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142786
- basch 7y ago
  It was a race to the bottom, it may have taken longer, but they all would have been shaving a dollar off at a time till somebody hit zero.

brobinson 7y ago

It was Interactive Brokers that forced Schwab's hand.

all_blue_chucks 7y ago

The first to offer (limited) free trades was Zecco, which later became TradeKing. I think RobinHood was the first to sell the rights to trade against their users, though.