I don’t know of anything fully libre exists, so in lieu of that: TD Ameritrade was the only software I found that actually has a Linux client. I’m pretty sure it’s still proprietary, but idk of anything else.
Vanguard and Fidelity are both good. You can just use the web site, probably you can even just call them up and make requests over the phone. Vanguard is a little bit more for normal person investing (mostly index funds and no weird shit), Fidelity offers crypto and all the nonsense too if you want that, but they’re both pretty respectable.
Phone orders cost money, lol. Website is always a great option
All orders cost money. If they’re not charging you $5 per trade or whatever, then they’re taking a lot more than that by selling your “order flow” to someone who’s shaving little bits off it by creatively timing when the trades actually are going through and at what exact price.
This funniness only affects market orders, right? I reckon most retail orders are market orders, just wondering if I understand correctly. If I place a limit order, then I don’t have to worry about the $5 I saved on a $0 fee transaction being made up elsewhere, although I suppose the tradeoff is that my order may not be filled at all.
If you make a limit order, but the price drops that same second, it basically becomes a market order - you will pay the market price
I’m not super familiar with it, but just knowing the little bit that I know about it, this is my guess:
- The person who paid for the order flow sees a limit order for max price $45 or whatever.
- The user’s data is delayed by 15 minutes, so they see the current price as $46.
- The person who paid for order flow looks at the current price (which the user can’t see, since their data is 15 minutes delayed).
- If the current price is $43, they fill the order at $44 and the user feels like they came out ahead and is motivated to keep doing this
- If the current price is $45, they fill the order at $45, whatever
- If the current price is $47, they don’t fill the order
… and so on. I would bet it’s decently more complicated than that, but bottom line, there’s a reason these guys are paying all this money for order flows. It’s not because they’re not making money on them, and usually the procedure is to extract the money from the most-poorly-informed person involved (which in this case is the end user by a big margin).
This is interesting. I’m not sure what is ment by non libre software. I imagine something like FOSS or graphineOS. Which I use on a nothing phone. I currently use the Vanguard app. Not but two or three times a month. And my apptracker blocking is flooded dailey. Sometimes over 600 attempts for app tracking from Vanguard. At all hours.
What is your apptracker?
I thought it was “built-in” but actually it is DDG
