I use the Alpaca API to trade penny stocks. Yesterday I got an email:
We have reviewed the activity in your account. The orders continue to be executed on the opening and closing auctions. Starting on Tuesday we will route your orders to a non retail route and you will be charged a fee of 40 mils per share executed. To calculate the daily fee you would take your total shares traded for the day and multiple by .0040.
I’m kinda pissed at this! This 0.4 cents/share isn’t mentioned anywhere on their website that I could see, and it's more than I pay at my main broker (IBKR).
I understand PFOF and how Alpaca makes money, but Alpaca's pricing and fees page says: “For U.S. equity trades there are no commissions charged and all clearing fees are paid by Alpaca Securities LLC to our clearing firm”.
On-open and on-close are valid order types in your API. If you have limits on that, say so up front. Interactive Brokers Lite has a similar policy but they say so in the footer here
I just had a call with 4 people from Alpaca and they told me auctions are “non-retail” so that makes me a professional trader and hence not eligible for commission-free trading. I told them to change the language on the website, they said “Ok but it won't be anytime soon.”
Anyone else heard from Alpaca about this matter?
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