Traders' Roundtable

Alexander Elder writes in his 1993 book "Trading for a Living":

"You can expected to pay a ... commission of anywhere from $12 to $100 for every futures contract you trade. Big traders ... pay less; small traders ... pay more. ... For example, you may pay $30 to trade a single contract of corn ..."

Looking at Interactive Brokers' site today, their commission for trading one futures contract is $0.85.

Have commissions really have improved so much during this time, or am I missing something?

another way to look at it might be that floor traders always had the lowest commission's as they had direct market access. Now days anyone with a computer and a discount DMA broker (eg; IB) is effectively a floor trader.
Comparing the two costs on that basis between then and now might be very interesting.

the first time I paid a retail client rate I fell over - how can you charge $8 for something I used to pay $1 for and you are offering nothing as I also pay for your platform - these guys down the road only want $5 - so they matched it.

Trading Leech wrote:Alexander Elder writes in his 1993 book "Trading for a Living":

"You can expected to pay a ... commission of anywhere from $12 to $100 for every futures contract you trade. Big traders ... pay less; small traders ... pay more. ... For example, you may pay $30 to trade a single contract of corn ..."

Looking at Interactive Brokers' site today, their commission for trading one futures contract is $0.85.

Have commissions really have improved so much during this time, or am I missing something?

trading/investing with a CTA/IB can sometimes expose a client to those high contract fees still....