Here's my two ticks worth about OEC.
The owner, Rick Tomsic also runs a private hedge fund, mainly investing in the 30 year bond product. You can find more info about him, and the companies he's been associated with through the years, plus the NFA complaints and sanctions lodged against an FCM where he ran the back office operations (curiously, Tomsic was
not implicated in the matter) by searching at the NFA website:
National Futures Association - NFA is a regulatory service provider for the derivatives markets
PROS:
- Competitive rates and margins - all available online 24/7. Go here for the current rates (which are not linked from the site map):
Online Futures Trading - Open E Cry â„¢ Rates
- Margin and accrued commission/fees are also available real-time while you trade, as it is built into their trading platform, OEC Trader, so you know exactly what your true P/L is while you are trading. No need to wait for your end-of-day statement to find that your trades are a scratch or a loss because of trading expenses (fees/commissions).
- Free trading platform with DOM, and charting. New version of DOM has volume histogram built-in, plus real-time P/L as described above.
- Self-serve trading - if you have the capital (margin) you can trade any of all of their available contracts. Just open a DOM on the trading symbol and trade as you please.
- Support available around the clock 24/6 (whenever the markets are open) via built-in PM on their trading software. So you can reach a broker immediately on your platform, without having to call them. Nice touch that all brokers should have.
- Online account update and management. Need a wire or check? Get it online. No calls needed. Need account statements - download it at your leisure.
- Built-in auto-trading API available for Tradestation, called AutoX. Free for existing accounts until year-end, but they plan to charge $0.10 per side in the future for each auto-trade execution.
- DEMO account can be uploaded with your current rate table so that you can have a more accurate feel for how the potential P/L of strategies while testing them out.
CONS:
- OEC Trader platform is slower than other platforms out there. DOM is nice and flexible, but the execution/speed is just a tad slower than even Tradestation charting and Time and Sales, for example. Or the AT platform from Transact (and their IB Innfinitty). Place them side-by-side and the delay is readily apparent. When you're dealing with $$$, every millisecond counts.
- OECTrader charting sucks. Bad ticks, lack of historical data (backfill), and other anomalies make it a curiosity item at best. Then again, it is free, so you are getting what you pay for.
- As for bad ticks, you'll see forex-like "stop spikes" in the e-minis prior to and near the end of the trading day, if you pull up their charting. Bad ticks, perhaps, but it does show in their trading DOM on live trading as well. And since you don't see these spikes in the official exchange T&S prints, well....
- Moreover, in their 30 year bond (which is a full-tick product), you'll see the occasional change in P/L without the tick moving up or down. Careful analysis shows that they've actually got quarter- and half- ticks in their charting and on their live DOM in the 30 year bond. Again, bad news here, since this has been brought to their attention on three separate occasions, and it's still not addressed and fixed.
- Only 5 DOM open at any one time. Very odd limitation to their system. Likewise, the maximum quotes you can add to the platform simultaneously is only 50. At one time it was 100, then 25. Apparently, they are still having server issues due to growing pains from a marketing push.
- DOM lacks proper tiered bracketing system to scale-in/scale out. Yes, the DOM has the fancy buttons for it, but the reality is that it doesn't work - at least not like the AT platform from Transact. Another feature that needs to be fixed, especially if scaling-out via brackets automatically is a component of your trading plan or strategy.
- DEMO platform is not free for customers. They charge you $24.99/mo to have a running demo to use. Clearly, one demo should be made available free of charge to existing customers as part of the account setup.
SUMMARY:
In all, the pluses outweigh the minuses with Open ECry. Still, as with all firms, there are some issues that could be addressed - including some potential regulatory issues that may need immediate attention, as noted above.
Online Futures Trading - Open E Cry â„¢ a Direct Access Trading System