I don't get it. How does Alpaca offer free broker services?
Probably payment for order flow and earning interest on cash, like everyone else. Or maybe they don't make any money, I dunno.
Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
91–100 of 170 posts
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I meant repeating group delimiters. What I do like about fix clients (not fix protocol) is the extra value they provide by keeping your sessions alive, tolerating hot restarts, logging in and out on schedule and managing multiple sessions. Things you have to craft when building rest clients. Other than that, I see absolutely no difference between going through a conformance test and reading rest APIs. It is basic…
> What I do like about fix clients (not fix protocol) is the extra value they provide by keeping your sessions alive, tolerating hot restarts, logging in and out on schedule and managing multiple sessions. I agree somewhat, but I think the protocol needed to come first. Can you honestly say that in its absence, multiple clients would be able to implement these behaviours in a uniform manner? The fact that there's a c…
One earthly concern is that, because of this unified interface myth, management will think that once you integrated with one broker, the others come free because FIX.
Oh, you need another week or two with the other broker? Why? We spent so much just to get the industry standard API.
Sorry I'm too jaded to appreciate sequence numbering and the industry standard logout message format that fix provides at the given time.
About your point on rest, I do acknowledge the difficulties you're mentioning, of every broker requiring different rest messages to do the same thing. I've come across brokers which accept single orders and grouping in different messages. The delay and errors it causes is insufferable.
The problem is, there has not been a body enforcing unity across brokers. Fix is a nice try, but it is left alone in the woods without any restrictions as to what brokers can or cannot alter. I would like this pointed out and heard of more and that's it.
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have subscribed to your channel. Do you know of any services that allow non US residents to join? I am in New Zealand.
NZ doesnt have much going for it in terms of access to international equities. If you have over $10k USD, you can get an interactive brokers account, their API is a bit rubbish and commissions are normally around $6.00 USD flat. Otherwise Direct Broking via Jardens, commissions are c. $30 NZD per trade. Sharesies are apparently launching international equities later in the year, but they dont offer API access.
~17 USD/trade? Jesus christ that's high..
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#94What's closest to Alpaca for UK based traders?
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#95I don't get it. How does Alpaca offer free broker services?
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably won't ever see an EU broker offer free trades. The EU market is more regulated to avoid anything that smells of front running. There was a somewhat revealing interview by the people behind Flatex, a big discount broker from Germany [0]. Dutch source, do use a translator https://www.tijd.be/markten-live/nieuws/algemeen/nieuwe-eige... . "Is it easier for a pan European company to keep big US competition li…
> You probably won't ever see an EU broker offer free trades. Freetrade, Trading212, both registered in the UK. (And I don't think 'transition period' would make a difference, but they're both years older than that.)
>Freetrade
Freetrade are now charging £3 a month for ISAs (tax free wrapped accounts) so it might be free but it's not completely free.
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#97(Disclaimer that I'm working on an open source FIX engine in Lisp.) This is a really cool project! But alas I couldn't use it as I'm not in the US, and I don't trade with Alpaca. And I feel like this plays into a negative trend I'm seeing. The retail brokerage market right now is treading on similar 'mistakes' in institutional markets 15ish years ago. Proprietary APIs were prolific, and therefore increased switching…
Since you’re not from US, what trading platforms do you use? I haven’t found any with free commissions and public APIs in the EU. Well, except for Interactive Brokers.
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably won't ever see an EU broker offer free trades. The EU market is more regulated to avoid anything that smells of front running. There was a somewhat revealing interview by the people behind Flatex, a big discount broker from Germany [0]. Dutch source, do use a translator https://www.tijd.be/markten-live/nieuws/algemeen/nieuwe-eige... . "Is it easier for a pan European company to keep big US competition li…
> You probably won't ever see an EU broker offer free trades. Freetrade, Trading212, both registered in the UK. (And I don't think 'transition period' would make a difference, but they're both years older than that.)
I had a quick look at Trading212 without properly investigating their business model. They seem to route all of their stock market orders through Interactive Brokers [0].
[0] https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/trading212.regulation/201...
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
how does Alpaca make money?
Guesing, they are selling order flow. Same like Robin Hood https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/a-controversial-part-of-robi...
So Robin Hood is taking from the rich, giving to the poor, and then turning around and selling the poor out?
Re: Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission
#100[deleted]