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CloseLightspeed Trading Review
Lightspeed is a great platform for active traders who are willing to maintain a high balance.
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Scientists say the speed of light is around 670 million miles per hour.
Is that how fast you can trade with Lightspeed? Honestly, we’re not sure.
Our home is in finance, which is pretty far from physics. What we can say, however, is that active day traders love Lightspeed because of its ability to execute high-volume trades at lightening-quick speeds.
Lightspeed Trading is regulated by both FINRA and NFA and as such the broker is fully regulated for the US markets and will provide a legitimate, safe service.
While the cost of trading is low, you’ll need to maintain a higher account minimum than other brokerages. If you’re looking for an affordable platform that can handle a high trade volume, Lightspeed could be just the answer.
Fast Facts
- Account Minimum: $10,000
- Fees: Charges for nearly everything
- Best For: Active traders
- Highlight: Discounted tiers based on trading volume
Ratings
- Commissions & Fees: 4/10
- Investment Selection: 6/10
- Account Options & Features: 7/10
- Usability: 6/10
- Educational Resources: 5/10
- Customer Service: 6.5/10
- Overall: 6/10
Investor Warning: Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of Lightspeed or any investment company before investing.
What is Lightspeed? 📔
If you deal high volumes and trade options, then you’ll love Lightspeed. The platform was built for active traders who trade a lot (“at the speed of light”).
In addition, Lightspeed offers Time in Force options that let you pick from all kinds of spreads. There are several ways to place orders, so you can craft a custom order and duplicate it. You can set up default orders as well. There are no automated trades, however.
Lightspeed Trader is the company’s popular desktop platform. You can execute all of your orders through this platform, and while it does not have the most streamlined experience, you can customize it to execute your trades fast. You can set up infinite hotkey options for fast trades.
There are a ton of ways to trade using Lightspeed, such as mapping hotkeys to send your orders to the market faster. Their main platform is Lightspeed Trader, a desktop app that can be configured so your tools always start on top.
However, if you trade in options, investors need to use a separate platform called Livevol X, which has more evaluation and spread options.
Lightspeed Trading Overview and Summary
Here are some of the Lightspeed Trading key features that we rounded up for you:
- If you are a high-velocity trader who cuts commissions by operating at high trade volumes, then you’ll love Lightspeed. It’s designed to help day traders save money when they make over 250,000 trades per month.
- Advanced charting, automated trades, and mobile apps are all available with Lightspeed, but you’ll pay extra for certain functionality. For example, automated trades are only available for the Lightspeed Gateway add-on, which costs $325 per month.
- Lightspeed’s name comes from the extremely fast trade executions. Nothing else but the best for active day traders, right?
- You can monitor stocks and get suggestions in real-time using Lightspeed Trader, which makes it the best platform if you are constantly looking for trending equities, ETFs, options, and futures.
- This is not a platform for retirement planning and long-term investing, and you won’t find any mutual funds or fixed income trading on this platform.
How Does Lightspeed Trading Work? 🏗
Once you sign up for an account online, you can download the desktop app Lightspeed Trader. You can customize the desktop so that it shows you news, research, and tools that you use the most at the top.
In addition, you can also pick the venues that you want to use for each stock or option trade. You can route the orders through 20 different venues, including dark pools if you wish.
Lightspeed is the simplest order router, which has its own algorithm that helps you execute trades on the best exchange and route as chosen by the AI. This means that you always get a fast, trusted execution.
In addition, Lime Trading Gateway provides users the ability to get an order entry in under a second. There are also more choices on how to trade within this platform tool.
If you are an options trader, then you’ll use Livevol X. This tool is meant to have the most spreads and trade options. It is more visually engaging on the desktop platform, but you can also use the web version if you want faster, simpler order options.
Lightspeed Compared
Commissions
$4.50
$0
$3 or $5/month
Account minimum
Web Trader:$10,000
Lightspeed Trader: $10,000 -$25,000
$500
$5 required to start investing
Minimum initial deposit
$10,000
$0
$0 to open account
Best for
Active traders
Beginners and mutual fund investors
People who struggle to save
Highlight
Discounted stocks based on trading volume
Low fees
“Invest spare change” feature
Promotion
None
Lightspeed Trading Review: Pros and Cons ⚖
For active traders, Lightspeed was built to make your life easier and offers the most popular tools within a simplified desktop interface and mobile app platform. It was designed to also be the fastest platform, which is why it’s considered a low-latency brokerage.
Lightspeed has a sophisticated algorithm that offers low-latency trading, which could mean higher profitability due to quicker executions. This is a great advantage for any day trader or high-velocity trader, but it comes with a trade-off.
While Lightspeed is a discount broker, you must maintain a higher account balance. This should not be a problem for an active day trader, but it could present issues for beginner traders who do not have a $10,000 account minimum to spare. Still, if you like customizable charting and analysis tools, you’ll find the best ones here.
You can trade in all equities, options, and futures with Lightspeed. However, the browser and web apps do not allow for futures trading. You won’t fund mutual funds and bonds.
The powerful technology, range of options, and valuable tools make Lightspeed one of the best platforms for day trading. The following explains the pros and cons of Lightspeeed, outlining the primary benefits and a few potential drawbacks:
Pros
- Through Lightspeed Trader, their desktop platform, you can customize your own orders and even access automated trading tools for your orders, but it comes with a monthly cost of $130. This is waived if you pay more than $130 in commission fees per month.
- The low-latency platform was designed for fast, trusted executions
- Customer service is prompt during regular business hours
- Advanced charting and real-time streaming quotes offer the best suggestions for high velocity day traders
Cons
- Not a platform for beginner or casual investors
- Fees are charged for everything, which is why only high velocity traders and institutions typically use Lightspeed
- There are fees for all partner and third-party services, such as $325 fee to use Sterling or the $230 to $260 fee to add Eze EMS/RealTick to your Lightspeed Trader platform
- You’ll pay $325 a month to use automated trading features through Lightspeed Gateway
- $25,000 account minimum is required to use Lightspeed Trader
What Can You Trade with Lightspeed? 👇
Lightspeed is named so because it is designed for active traders. As such, commission fees are relative to the amount of trades that you have per month.
You can trade trade the following:
- ☑️ Stocks
- ☑️ ETFs (not commission-free)
- ☑️ Options
- ☑️ Futures
You will not find support for long-term investing on this platform, which means no mutual funds or fixed-income trading. In addition, you won’t be able to do any cryptocurrency or forex trading on this platform.
Investor Education 📚
When it comes to education and learning tools, Lightspeed offers some information on learning to trade stocks, options, and futures through “Active Trading Webinars” and the active trading basics area of the education center. You will find pages dedicated to most of the basics when it comes to trading strategies, but for more complex or trending strategies, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Beginners can learn to use the interface through the Lightspeed Trader trading tutorials, and you can also have a demo prepared for you, though brokers also use this to sell you on the platform and higher account minimums.
How to Open a Lightspeed Account 👷♂️
Lightspeed offers a completely digital way to sign up for individual, joint, options, and futures accounts. However, you have to complete a few questions to determine if you are a professional or non-professional trader, which takes some time. The verification process was complete in 24 hours including funding.
Lightspeed Charts and Research Tools 📊
With real-time streaming quotes, customizable charts, and live market scanner tools, investors will find all kinds of trading opportunities. Charts have access to 20 years of historical data through the platform.
Lightspeed is definitely a platform for experienced day traders, and there isn’t much for research beyond testing strategies and historical charts. You do have access to TipRanks, which is included with your account.
However, beyond a stock scanner, real-time quotes, and TipRanks, you won’t find much else in market research.
🕵️♂️ Do you find this a little bit complex? Start by looking at best trading platforms for beginners.
Lightspeed Trading Account Fees 💳
Lightspeed’s pricing is based on volume, but unlike other brokerage firms, you will be charged a commission fee. The structures change based on per trade or per contract.
For those who choose per trade, you will pay $2.50 as long as you have over 10,000 trades per month. This rate goes up depending on the volume. For under 250 trades per month, traders pay $4.40 flat per trade for stock or ETF.
If you go with the per share rate, traders pay as low as $0.00010 per share if they have over 15,000,000 shares in monthly volume or as much as $0.0045 with under 249,900 shares per month. There is a $1 minimum with that last rate.
For options, traders pay $0.20 per contract but most have over 100,000 contracts per month. For those with less than 500 contracts per month, you’ll pay $0.60 per option contract.
Futures cost $1.29 per side. Futures options cost $1.79 per contract.
Lightspeed is designed to be most cost-conscious for the frequent trader, so the more you trade, the less you will pay. While the platform claims to have the lowest trading fees on equities and options, it’s still not as low as Firstrade.
There are also some hidden charges to note with Lightspeed. For example, on Lightspeed Trader and its partner Sterling Trader, you will be charged a minimum commission charge to any order less than 100 shares. This fee is equal to the per-share rate times 100.
Lightspeed web and mobile app users also must pay a minimum commission of $4.50 on any options order. Per-share equity fees are not available for Lightspeed browser trading or mobile app.
There are also funding minimums for new accounts as follows:
- ☑️ $25,000 for Lightspeed Trader, Eze EMS, or Sterling Trader
- ☑️ $10,000 for browser-based platform
- ☑️ $175,000 for margin traders
You can fund accounts via check, ACH, or wire transfers.
🧐 Trading with little to no fees sounds interesting? These are some of the top discount brokers.
Multiple Platforms and Partners 💻
Depending on what you’re looking for in a high-velocity trading platform, Lightspeed has every option except for automatic trading. You can use Lightspeed Trader as your desktop platform for day trading, hedge funds, and institutions.
However, Lightspeed charges $130 per month to use the desktop application. You can have this fee waived if you trade more and pay commissions over $130 per month, however.
You can also access trading tools on the web on Lightspeed’s website or their mobile app. There is a $0 application fee for these tools, as long as you are not a part of an institution. The mobile app is available on iOS and Android. While you can make trades and access charts, it’s less robust on mobile than through the web or even more feature-rich Lightspeed Trader desktop platform.
Futures trading is only available through their RealTick and CQG platform partners.
Does Lightspeed Offer Futures Trading? 🤔
Lightspeed has one of the only platforms to offer futures and futures options trading. The current rate is $0.25 to $0.60 per contract for futures, which is based on trading volume. The more you trade, the less you pay applies here as well.
However, all futures trading is done through Lightspeed Trader in connection with Eze EMS aka RealTick or CQG. While Lightspeed tries to offer more for futures traders, you’ll be better served by using a full futures brokerage to access more tools. You’ll get only the basics through third party software on Lightspeed.
🔎 Are you looking to trade futures? Learn more about top futures brokers.
Lightspeed Fees Explained 👨🏫
It may seem like Lightspeed is free, but it charges for a variety of extras that are typically included with larger brokerages like TD Ameritrade and E*Trade. For example, Lightspeed Gateway does allow you to automate trades based on your own algorithms in C++ or JAVA API and FIX, but you have to pay $325 per month to access this software.
You also have to pay $325 per month to access Eze EMS or RealTick.You can make a variety of customized order entries, allowing you to set up any type of trade, but it’s expensive when considering the per month charge.
Sterling Trader is also a separate charge between $230 and $260 per month, which includes advanced charting and order entry options to integrate with Lightspeed Trader.
Is Lightspeed Trading Safe? 🔒
Lightspeed has not suffered any data breaches recently. Your accounts are insured through SIPC for $500,000 as well.
Lightspeed Funding and Withdrawal Details 🧾
You can fund your account through an ACH transfer for free through your bank. It’s simple to set up using Lightspeed’s funding tools.
Lightspeed makes it very easy to get your money. You can use the outgoing ACH transfer for free, and it only takes two business days to complete. The platform processes all withdrawal requests the same day if made by 2:30 PM EST. You can simply click “Transfer Funds” and add your bank to send your funds.
You can also use wire transfers, which have a $20 cost for domestic and $50 cost for international. Lightspeed will also mail you a check, which takes about 3 to 5 business days to receive.
Customer Support ☎
Lightspeed offers support through a toll-free number and email. There are also physical locations available in New York and Chicago. Their customer service team is available during regular market hours Monday through Friday.
You will not find any live chat features, and most support questions are directed to email or their frequently asked questions, tutorials, and webinar pages.
Tricks to Using Lightspeed Like a Pro 🧙♂️
- ☑️ New Lightspeed Trader, RealTick/Eze EMS, and Sterling accounts get a 50% rebate for stock and options commissions for the first three months up to 10,000.
- ☑️ Set up your account online and test out web or mobile app features to see if it suits your needs. Lightspeed Trader is a level up that is designed for traders who have hundreds of thousands of trades per month, which is why it costs $130 per month.
- ☑️ If you spend $130 in commission fees through trading on Lightspeed Trader, you won’t have to pay the subscription fee.
- ☑️ There aren’t any commission-free trades on the platform, but there are volume discounts. This is why institutions and hedge funds use this platform the most because you can pay as little as $2.50 per trade if you have more than 10,000 trades per month.
- ☑️ You also have to pay your own routing fees depending on the venue. You can see a list of Lightspeed routing fees here.
What Rocks About Trading with Lightspeed
Lightspeed discounts stocks based on your trading volume, which is a good thing for active day traders. The per-share or per trade savings is best for those who trade hundreds of thousands of shares per month. Per-share discounts begin at $0.0045 per share for a $1 minimum trade commission, but that’s only if you do less than 250,000 shares per month.
Futures trading also offers discounts. You’ll pay between $0.25 and $0.60 per contract based on your volume.
As long as you are not a professional, you won’t pay any fees to use the browser-based or mobile app platform, but the more robust tools are available through Lightspeed Trader. This platform was built for fast trades.
Lightspeed describes its Lightspeed Trader app as a low-latency platform designed for fast, high-quality trade executions. This is true since you don’t have any intermediary brokerage helping with trade executions. Everything is done in seconds, which is very important for high-velocity day traders.
You can set up default orders, automated orders, and customized bulk orders if you opt to pay for the Lightspeed Gateway and Lightspeed Trader platforms, which is a combined total of over $350 per month.
What Lightspeed Could Do Better 🎛
Lightspeed really caters to active traders, so it’s no surprise that they require you to have a $10,000 minimum account balance. If this is a deal breaker for you, we recommend checking out the pros and cons of Interactive Brokers who did away with account minimums in 2018 and also removed their inactivity fee in 2021. Lightspeed has seemingly fallen behind in this regard.
Minimums are also higher if you want to rade using the Lightspeed Trader platform. To trade on the desktop platform, you’ll need an account minimum of $25,000.
There are several fees that Lightspeed charges you to use their advanced tools and desktop applications. However, there are also fees for customers with less than $15,000 in trades per month. You will incur a $25 monthly minimum fee.
You also have to pay $130 monthly for the Lightspeed Trader platform. You’ll pay between $260 and $350 a month for other tools like Eze EME and Sterling Trader platform.
There are also no commission-free equities or ETFs, which has become standard for most of the other online brokers. While it’s not a big deal for active traders, and Lightspeed does offer futures when other brokers do not, if you were looking to save on commission fees and rates, Lightspeed is not the best platform for you.
Final Thoughts: Lightspeed Trading 💬
Lightspeed is probably best for experienced day traders, hedge funds, and institutions. Anyone who isn’t dealing with high volume day trades will find the pricing to be exorbitant and will not want to deal with the monthly subscription fees to use Lightspeed Trader and other tools.
While the advanced charting and automated trading tools are superb, they come at a higher cost. That said, professional day traders love the Lightspeed Trader platform because of its customization features and discounts for high volume trading. Much of these fees don’t matter if you are trading over six figures each month.
Lightspeed Trading: FAQs
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How Much Does Lightspeed Trading Cost?
Lightspeed Trading charges a $130 monthly fee for their desktop platform – although it is reduced by the amount that you pay in commission fees. So if you end up paying $130 or more per month in commission fees, you won’t be charged anything extra for the platform.
Lightspeed also charges a monthly market data fee and has a variety of minimum deposits depending on the type of account you’d like to open. Lightspeed also charges commission fees for stocks, ETFs, options, and futures, as well as a minimum commission of $1.00 on any order.
While the exact costs of Lightspeed Trading are hard to estimate and will vary from client to client, the platform is on the more expensive side of the spectrum.
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How do Withdrawals Work with Lightspeed?
In order to submit a withdrawal request, you’ll first have to log in to the secure client area, and then select the Transfer Funds option in the navigation bar on the left side. Clicking on this link allows you to submit an online withdrawal request.
ACH transfers are available free of charge, and take two business days to complete. If an ACH withdrawal request is sent over by 2:30 PM EST on any given day, it will be processed on the same business day.
Wire transfers are usually received on the same business day, but there is a $20 fee for domestic wire transfers and a $50 fee for international wire transfers.
You can also have an outgoing check mailed to your address of record. Checks are processed within a business day and usually take 3 to 5 business days to reach their intended destination. There are no fees associated with normal check requests.
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How Can You Fund a Lightspeed Futures Account?
A Lightspeed Futures account can be funded either via check or by a wire transfer.
Checks should be made payable to Wedbush Securities Inc. and should be mailed to Lightspeed, Attn: New Accounts 1001 Avenue of the Americas, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10018. Checks must have a pre-printed name and address of the account holder, and you should also write your account number on your check. Cashier’s checks and 3rd party checks are not permitted.
As for wire transfers, here is the relevant information:
BMO Harris N.A. 111 W Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603
ABA: #071-000-288
Credit: Wedbush Securities Inc.
Customer Segregated Account: 2730893
For Further Credit: Customer Name and Trading Account Number
Swift Code: HATRUS44
You have to include your account name and Lightspeed account number on the wire instructions – otherwise, your wire transfer will be rejected.
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What Can I Invest in with Lightspeed?
Lightspeed allows you to invest in stocks, options, futures, and exchange-traded funds.
There is an important note to make here – if you want to trade futures, you’ll have to pay an additional fee for Eze EMS (formerly known as RealTick Pro), which amounts to $325 per month.
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How Can I Contact Lightspeed Customer Service?
There are two main ways by which you can contact Lightspeed’s customer support service. You can send Lightspeed’s customer service an email at ContactUs@Lightspeed.com, or you can call them via phone.
If you opt to call them, the number for United States callers is 888.577.3123, while the number for international callers is +1-646-393-4800.
Lightspeed also has two physical locations – a New York Office that is located on the 16th floor at 1001 Avenue of the Americas, and a Chicago office in suite 2950 at 181 West Madison Street.
Lightspeed and the Competition
See how Lightspeed compares to the top investing platforms by reading one of the reviews below.
All reviews, research, news and assessments of any kind on The Tokenist are compiled using a strict editorial review process by our editorial team. Neither our writers nor our editors receive direct compensation of any kind to publish information on tokenist.com. Our company, Tokenist Media LLC, is community supported and may receive a small commission when you purchase products or services through links on our website. Click here for a full list of our partners and an in-depth explanation on how we get paid.