Jared,
Thanks for your response. Let me see if I understand this correctly:
1) It seems that master accounts are currently not supported. You write that it could be ready in as little as 2 weeks. Does that mean you are already working to implement this or that you could if I - and perhaps a few others - showed enough interest?
2) Once implemented, if IB does the trade mirroring,( which I believe they do) , the limitations on the number of servers required would only be constrained by the virtual server's memory/cpu, am I correct? In other words, with my master account, I currently send an order using "grouped profiles", where I send one order say for 732 shares of aapl and IB apportions that either proportionally according to preset rules for that "basket" into the following:
U939333 BUY 500 SHARES OF AAPL STOCK LIMIT 123.00
U922444 BUY 10 SHARES OFF AAPL STOCK LIMIT 123.00
U922943 BUY 222 SHARES OF AAPL STOCK LIMIT 123.00
Could I do that with just the one server?
Right now, I only have about 10 customers trading algorthmically, but I would like to expand on that, and eventually grow it to a few 100.
I would love to be a part of the QuantConnect community to share in the general knowledge and grow the toolset that can be used to address trading universe. But I need to control my costs. Some of my account are large but others are quite small = with a few holding as little at as $10,000. These are set up on algo's that will not trigger the pattern trading restrictions of too frequent trading and are targeted to return a safe 6-12% a year. That's only $600/$1200 a year in gross profit from which my fees (around $150 / year are deducted) . If I need to charge each cient an additional $10 x 12 = $120 , reducing my client's net return to 3% to 9%. I would like to be able to continue and in fact expand on my customer base of small customers as I think this is an underserved part of the market.
My alternative of course is to use python with TWS api and my existing cloud servers. Yes I'll have a lot more bellyaches first establishing the headless tws/python configuration, but I'll be able to run all my users for essentially the monthly cost of my cloud server (around $75-100 / month). Equally important in my considerations, I am comfortable the rug cannot be pulled out from under my feet from one day to the next as I've just experienced with Quantopian.
Obviously, you guys need to make a profit. In fact, I would feel much more comfortable knowing that your business model is quite profitable as that ensures that you will be in business for many years to come. But have you considered - perhaps in your "institutional " package - offering an "unlimited" user accounts but with specified bandwidth and cpu charges that increase proportionately to usage? My algo's use compartively small memory footprints to come to a buy/sell deciscion - and then send 50-odd identical orders to IB 12 to 16 times per week.
I look forward to your responses. I hope you are not going to crazy with this Quantopian business but I'm sure Q's loss will be QC's gain. I'm very admiring of what you have accomplished since your start and wish you the best in the future.