[larrykubin]

Shameless plug: I started a YouTube channel on this topic that covers a lot of commission free trading API's, including Alpaca (got featured in their docs), Robinhood Private API, TD Ameritrade, Tradier, and more. I'm seeing a huge growth in interest in developing automated trading bots and algos. With commissions dropping to zero, there is a huge wave of day/swing traders that want to learn Python, so am creating as many tutorials as possible.

https://youtube.com/parttimelarry

[melvinroest]

What's the revenue model if commissions have dropped to zero? In other words, how can this be free? Are they making money via worse bid-ask spreads?

I feel like a clueless person who lives in the year 2004, wondering why internet services are offered for free.

[alteria]

Excellent explainer that's worth a read [1] and it's HN thread [2]

tl;dr: Interest, payment for order flow, and securities lending (but mostly interest)

[1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-mone...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20276551

[teruakohatu]

I have subscribed to your channel. Do you know of any services that allow non US residents to join? I am in New Zealand.

[gunn]

There's https://hellostake.com/ for NZ and AU. They don't have an API yet but would like to in the future - see comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceNZ/comments/fnbmlx/x...

As mentioned, Sharesies plan to allow US market access: https://app.sharesies.nz/us-equities-register They do seem to have a private API at least: https://app.sharesies.nz/api/fund/list

https://www.revolut.com/en-NZ have plans to expand to NZ, I don't know much about their services though.

[gunn]

I also just found https://hatchinvest.nz/ - has US market access, I don't know about an API

[teruakohatu]

Thank you

[phyalow]

NZ doesnt have much going for it in terms of access to international equities. If you have over $10k USD, you can get an interactive brokers account, their API is a bit rubbish and commissions are normally around $6.00 USD flat. Otherwise Direct Broking via Jardens, commissions are c. $30 NZD per trade. Sharesies are apparently launching international equities later in the year, but they dont offer API access.

[teruakohatu]

Thanks for the response. I was hoping for API access. It is a pity that companies don't expand here when they open an AU branch. That said, I don't blame them as our regulators are very inflexible, I used to love ipredict until it was shutdown.

[phyalow]

Yeah, simply put New Zealand is far too small of an addressable market to really warrant much attention.

[smabie]

~17 USD/trade? Jesus christ that's high..

[teruakohatu]

The joys of living in a small isolated country.

[JCBarry]

Sorry for the delayed reply, I wanted to get confirmation from our brokerage team before posting.

Tradier Brokerage (https://brokerage.tradier.com) can open individual accounts for New Zealand residents and API access comes standard with every account (including market data). You can place orders for US-based equities and options and we offer competitive pricing models for all traders.

If you have any questions, you can email [e-mail] or call 980-272-3880.

Full disclosure, I work at Tradier.

[proverbialbunny]

Find any APIs that do smaller than 5 sec bars, or tick data that is more frequent than once every 5 seconds?