[fyz]

It's been a while since I've used IB, but they are one of the few retail front ends that offer algorithmic execution.

i.e., instead of showing 1000 shares to the market, it might parcel it out in small chunks to hide your footprint.

Although this typically isn't relevant for most orders, if you are trading something thin, it could be helpful.

[djakjxnanjak]

Patio11’s comment got me very curious and I’m not sure this quite explains it. If I’m selling millions of dollars worth of a tech stock, would IB give me a materially better price?

[javert]

Not patio11, but I interpreted that comment of his as referring to this particular part of his blog post:

> A better reason for a technologist to be long a stock a lot of people want to short is because they have earned it through services and, for whatever reason, not sold it. If you own a material amount of stock in a publicly traded technology company, particularly a material amount of stock which is not widely available at the moment, you should probably devote non-zero effort to understanding whether you’re allowed to loan that stock out and, if so, whether your brokerage will pay you to do that.

In other words, if you own millions of dollars of stock in a company but you aren't allowed to sell it or just aren't going to, you may be able to make serious money "for free" just by lending out your shares to short sellers. If your brokerage will pay you to do that, as IB will.

[marvin]

Or maybe hedge against massive losses on it, if you are legally allowed to do that. If I remember correctly, this saved Mark Cuban from ruin, for instance.

[javert]

Probably also a good idea, although I don't think patio11 said IB is better than other platforms for options.

[fyz]

If you're trying to sell GOOG, which trades a few billion worth every day, no.

If you're trying to sell TEAM (Atlassian), which trades a few hundred million, maybe.

If you're trying to sell something less liquid (which trades a few million of notional - price x volume - then you probably want to go with some kind of algo execution.

i.e., your order size as a percentage of notional traded matters.