DeeBee

Hi fellow traders,

I have some questions regarding your experience with LightSpeed Trading platform, I hope some of our LS users here can help me.

1. I've read that the fees to buy or sell is 0.00395 or .40 per 100 shares can you please tell me how much would be the actual commission cost after you add any of the ancillary fees e.g. ECN and other SEC fees?

2. How much is the monthly fees for the LS software?

3. How much do you pay for live data fees (quotes)?

4. Is there any other fees that you can think of aside from the items above?

5. Assuming you opened a 25K account do you get 4x intraday buying power?

6. Assuming you have 30K in your trading account and you've used your available margin let say you day trade (bought and sold same day) a stock that cost 90K do you pay in interest for that particular day? If yes, how much? An estimate would be fine.

7. Do they have some sort of back office support where you can keep track and download trading history and account statements?

Thank you for sharing me your time and experience.

db

Brendan Egan

Hey DeeBee,
I am with Lightspeed so I'll try and answer all your questions as best as possible:

The ECN fees really depend on whether you are adding liquidity (limit orders outside the current market) or removing liquidity (market orders or limit orders at the bid/ask) as well as what ECN you are using (ARCA, NSDQ, BATS, etc.). I generally use ARCA and most of the time use market orders and it comes to about an additional $0.40/100 shares, so a total of about $7-8 per 1000 shares including the commissions.

There are no monthly fees for the actual software, however you do need to pay data fees, which for stocks is about $30/month and for futures I believe is around $60 or so a month. I only get the stock data at this point so I am paying only about $30/month.

This one was answered in #2--about $30 for stocks and about $60 for futures.

You are probably going to end up paying for a charting service as the Lightspeed charts are pretty weak in terms of 1) They only go back 4 days intraday and 2) if you trade using indicators they only have about 5 indicators. I personally use the Lightspeed charts most of the time, but a 3rd party real time charting software is about $100.

Yes you get 4x margin on all day trading accounts.

There are no interest fees for margin used for day trading---if you hold a position overnight I believe there is a small margin fee but I forget exactly what it is (and this obviously only applies to things bought on margin--if you do not exceed your account balance there should be no fee--also I believe you only get 2x margin for holding positions overnight)

There is a web-based tracking program through their website that provides all your trade confirmations (assuming you elect to not receive them by mail), tax documents, account balance, fees, etc.

You're welcome So far I have had a pretty good experience with them. I had some problems about 5 or 6 months ago but since then they have come out with software updates and did some server work which has really helped me. I get really good fills and fast data. My only complaint that I have about them is the charts are still pretty weak--they improved them over the charts in the previous version dramatically but they are still weak relative to other trading platforms. So even though the platform is technically free, most people end up paying about $100/month for 3rd party charting which is equivalent to the fees associated with most other platforms that include a very strong charting package.

Let me know if you have any other questions,
-Brendan

DeeBee

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for your prompt reply on my questions. I am presently a demo version of LS for my paper trading. If I could scoop up the 25K, I'll probably open an account with them. For the time being I'm also looking into some LLC trading firm where you only open an account for 5-10K and voila you can DT. Some of them are using LS too but charges a higher commission structures plus other monthly fees. Well its business so I guess its the price you pay if you don't have the minimum DT required funds.

AnthonyM1

I'm also just getting started with lightspeed and whats puzzling me the most it that I keep getting an immediate fill on sell stop orders below the market even before the market trades at my price...I cant for the life of me figure out why this is happening..

Also..does anyone have any suggestions on the quickest way to enter orders..Im coming from a swing trader's environment using Optionsxpress so speed of entry was not a concern before. For example if price is approaching resistance and I'm anticipating a bounce of that to go short, would programmed hot buttons be the way to go?

Last question..How do I map my by and sell buttons to buy at the bid and sell at the ask?

Brendan Egan

Are you on a demo by chance? If so the stop orders are not functional on demo accounts (If you put in a stop it will close your order immediately at market price). Not sure why the stops don't work on the demo but for whatever reason they don't.

The two most common ways are 1) market orders and 2) limit orders. A market order obviously gets filled on a buy at the current offer and on a sell at the current bid. You can use these (i use these about 60% of the time) but you might get a fill far away from the price you wanted if price is moving quickly. You can also setup buy and sell orders that are limit orders. For example the buy would be a buy limit at the current offer and the sell would be a sell limit at the current bid. This is sort of the same as a market only you won't get filled at a price worse than what you currently see (but sometimes you won't get filled at all).

Personally I use manual limit orders about 40% of the time and have them mapped on my keyboard so I can get them in really quickly.

Its been a while since I did this but I believe you need to click on the "P" in the Lightspeed menu and go to "hot buttons". This will open a new blank hot buttons window. Then you click the "C" in the Lightspeed menu and go to the windows tab. From the dropdown select the "hot buttons" window. This will bring up a page to set custom order types to show up in this window. I think the best way to do this would be to do a "Tier size order" and you can then select "bid tier" and "offer tier" and select the ECN you want to go through. That should then show up on your hot buttons window.

Also you can set your "tier" sizes on the "C" window under "tier sizes". There are also a few different ways to map these types of buttons, if you contact Lightspeed they can email you out a PDF that explains it in more depth.

-Brendan

AnthonyM1

Yes, I'm using a Demo account Brendan so I guess thats the issue. Thanks a million Brendan

swipy06

Hi,

I am testing the LightSpeed Trading platform and I've got 2 questions about it :

1) The last trade indicated in charts (to the right on the price column) is not the last trade of the MMBox. The charts seems not to move in real-time. Is it normal ?

2) how I can have a pointer on chart's windows to view information about a particular candle. I've seen a video where Brendan use this pointer on LightSpeed platform but I dont know how I can do.

Best regards.

swipy06 (Nice, France)

Brendan Egan

Hi Swipy06,
First off welcome to TradingApples We're glad to have you here.

For your first question about Lightspeed, the chart price should move in real time and correspond with the price on the time and sales screen. There could be some lag on the demo version but it should be real time.

As for the pointer, if you double-click on the chart the pointer will come up and you can then drag it over the candle of your choice. Double-clicking again on the chart will remove the crosshairs.

Hopefully this helps answer your questions, if not please be sure to let me know and I will try and clarify anything

See you around the community,
Brendan

TraderEdge

DeeBee

Like Brendan said its depends on whether you add liquidity. If you can do this all the time it will come to about .005/share, otherwise between .007 and .008/share. The only one I found to be cheaper is Interactive brokers if you do their bundled transactions - .005/share (with all fees included)

My fees come to $19.5
NYSE 1.08, NASQAQ 17.34, AMEX 1.08

Note: I have had some memory issues with Lightspeed, data not showing up on charts. Seem to be fixed now. The representatives at Lightspeed take care of you when you call.

AnthonyM1

I find point and click to be just as fast as using hot keys, but Lighspeed offers SuperSmart or Custom Orders in which you can map a number of different things. See below for details on mapping. Click on the C ( on any lighspeed box) and you'll get the box below.

swipy06

Thanks a lot dear Brendan for your very fast response and for all you do in order to help new traders. Tks too for the very goods videos on YouTube (EganTrading) they are remarkables !

Could you say to me please the title of the music which we can listen to on your videos. It is a very good music !

You can be sure that I make some publicity for your site and videos in France (ex: www.boursorama.com which is the forum number 1,...).

Best regards and good trade.

Swipy06 (Christophe, French riviera)

ps: LightSpeed is an extraordinary platform !!! All is 100% good !