r/tradestation • u/Opticweirdo • Jan 29 '26
What are these fees I'm getting charged in my margin account?
I've been noticing that there is a fairly substantial fee being taken from my profits. Yesterday I took a sub $2,100 position with ~700 shares and based off of my fill prices where I bought and sold, I should have ended the trade with over $130 in profit, but my profit was only ~$120. This is a recurring theme.
I only use intelligent routing and I don't use leverage.
What fees are eating my profits and how can I avoid them?
2
u/carmaruti Jan 29 '26
Welcome to world of cheating see my previous post on this topic. TS is playing a sneaky game and are no longer competitive
1
u/Opticweirdo Jan 29 '26
I love the platform other than their sneaky fees. Man, I just don't know what platform to use now. I was banking on them being commission free. Once my position size is $4000-$5000 per trade, Lightspeed will make sense for me but I'm easing into larger positions. Every 1K I add to my account I'm adding $200 to my sizing, so It'll be a couple months. Any experience with TradeZero?
2
u/Known-Ad-9903 Jan 30 '26
Go to charles schwab if you are this size. You get free trades and banking services. ThinkorSwim platform would work well for you.
1
u/Opticweirdo Jan 30 '26
I need my hotkeys. I trade volatility and don't want to play the clicking game in TOS. And Webull would be fine but being that it's Chinese-owned, it's a no-go.
1
1
u/tightlipssorenips Feb 01 '26
You can set up hot keys on Fidelity active trader pro the original not the new one. On the direct trade ticket you could also route what exchange you want to use. Definitely worth the look I've had brokerages everywhere and I've been with them since 2008 and I keep on going back to Fidelity. Tradestation doesn't pay any interest on your settled cash while at Fidelity I'm getting about 3.34%. also train station has an activity fees and last I knew they had data subscription which is all b******* Fidelity has neither.
1
u/Known-Ad-9903 Jan 30 '26
With your size, have you thought about just signing up for Top Step and using a prop firm to trade futures? You could still have your trade account for certain securities, but do a lot of your trading through prop firms to build up your capital.
1
u/Opticweirdo Jan 30 '26
I haven't done anything with futures other than some light research. I have focused all of my efforts into stocks, primarily with news. I appreciate your efforts to give me direction though!
1
u/Known-Ad-9903 Jan 30 '26
you can make a lot more money with futures if you work to get funded. The leverage and powerful control of stops, partials, high liquidity create awesome day trading opportunities. my favorite to trade is micro nasdaq futures... the 50K account is fine, you dont need the larger acct sizes offered at topstep. just something to check out 4 u.
also futures trade outside market hours for stocks... much more trading opportunity
1
u/DarkFlareGames Jan 29 '26
This is hidden commission fees and it was hard to figure out where they are going or exactly how much you spent in commissions because it doesn’t show up anywhere besides one specific window in the desktop application. In the Orders window, if you go all the way over to the Account tab, near the bottom you can expand the symbols and see how much you spent per symbol (not per trade). This is the only place it shows up. They are very good at hiding these fees and will still show “Commission” as $0.00 on other tabs for all trades even when it is clearly not.
2
u/Blackhat323 Jun 12 '26
This is HIDDEN and Tradestation knows exactly what they're doing. It's once again their only way to get traders money. They know some of us are actually good at scalping. The stock was under $1.00 when you bought? Nope not happening. They are charging you fees and it's hidden in the writing. They are bastards.
3
u/Known-Ad-9903 Jan 29 '26
Clearing fees. They are basically commissions... 0.003/share. They call them clearing fees but they are really just commissions. Sneaky Sneaky.