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I scalp the /es. I make anywhere from 40-80 trades per day. I trade 2 and 3 lots. I scalp for 1-2 ticks per trade (mostly 1 tick). COMMISSIONS ARE KILLING ME. I'm paying 4.15 per round trip. Over a third of my profits are going to commission. A $500 day turns into a $325 day. I do not have a lifetime licenses to Ninja. I know by purchasing that I can drop my commissions .25 per side. There are options with CQG, but they are still expensive. I even looked into Top Step, but there commissions are still over $3, and hey take 40%, I'm doing better than that on my own. The software options would absolutely help. However my account floats between $4K and $5K. So I am trying to keep monthly costs at a minimum. That being said...I spent $2,991 in commissions last month. Are there any other options out there? Thanks for the help.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
usually when you scalp a market, 20/30% of what you do goes in commission. It's really not unusual. If you can be consisten with this strategy you may think to some possible to solutions to reduce the impact of the commissions on your trading, but that will always be an important number.
If you want to trade for one or two tick, you could look to the stock market as well, but I don't know the US market so I can't tell for sure it is better.
Technically you are paying 2.32 in exchange fees and 1.83 in broker commissions per round turn. You really need to break down the cost to understand where you can cut cost. You will not be able to reduce the exchange fees without a lease or similar agreement. This would be a big commitment that you are not likely ready for.
So the best you can do at this point is reduce your "broker" commissions. Some brokers will offer volume discounts, for example Interactive Brokers price drops from .85 to .65 per side for all contracts over 1000 per month.
If you can cut your r/t by .50 with purchasing an NT license then that would cut your broker commissions to 1.33. You should do this ASAP, LOL! Then you can try to negotiate an additional volume discount on top of that.
Other options is to shop around but you are only likely to save a few pennies off the 1.33 r/t....
I'm surprised no one recommended the webinar on futures.io (formerly BMT) from a week ago or so, search archives it's titled scalping and covers everything including seats.