The Fastest Direct-Access Brokerages: SpeedTrader and the Speed Stack
What the fastest brokerage actually means, how SpeedTrader was built for speed, and a five-point checklist for vetting any direct-access broker — written by the founder of SpeedTrader, DAS Trader, and SureTrader.
What "fastest brokerage" actually means
Every broker in America claims to be fast. Almost none of them publish a latency number. For an active intraday trader the phrase fastest brokerage only matters when you break it into four measurable things: order-entry latency, routing decision time, exchange round-trip, and cancel/replace performance. A real direct-access broker — the kind built for traders who live and die on fills — wins on all four. A retail app dressed up with charts and zero-commission marketing usually loses on all four, because the order is sold to a wholesaler before it ever touches an exchange.
SpeedTrader was built inside that gap. When Guy Gentile founded SpeedTrader in 1999, the entire market was being re-plumbed by ECNs — Island, Archipelago, Instinet — and a small group of traders had figured out that the firm holding the line to the exchange always wins. SpeedTrader's job was to be that firm for everyone else: per-share pricing, Level II quotes, hotkeys, and direct routing to NASDAQ, ARCA, and the ECNs. The platform underneath it was DAS Trader Pro, which Guy also co-founded, because DAS was — and still is — the front-end built specifically for sub-second cancel/replace at the desk.
The four components of broker speed
Anyone selling you the fastest brokerage should be able to answer all four of these on the phone. If they can't, the speed isn't there.
- 01
Order-entry latency
How many microseconds between hotkey press and the order leaving the broker's gateway. On a real fastest brokerage this is sub-millisecond; on a retail app it's tens to hundreds of milliseconds because the order is routed through a payment-for-order-flow wholesaler before it ever sees an exchange.
- 02
Routing decision time
How the broker picks a destination. A direct-access broker like SpeedTrader exposes ARCA, EDGX, NSDQ, BATS, IEX, and dark pools by name and lets the trader override the smart router. A retail broker hides the decision and gets paid for it.
- 03
Exchange round-trip
Geography matters. Brokers and platforms that colocate inside the NJ exchange data centers (Mahwah, Carteret, Secaucus) shave milliseconds off the wire. The fastest direct-access brokerages either colocate or sponsor access through firms that do.
- 04
Cancel and replace
Speed isn't just about getting filled — it's about getting out. Sub-second cancel/replace on partial fills is the difference between scratching a bad trade and wearing it. SpeedTrader was built on DAS Trader Pro precisely because DAS handled cancel/replace as a first-class operation.
How SpeedTrader was built for speed
SpeedTrader is a U.S. direct-access broker-dealer that Guy Gentile founded in 1999. The premise was simple: the active trader at home should be able to route orders the same way the trader at the prop desk does. That meant per-share pricing instead of per-trade, Level II quotes and Time & Sales on the screen, hotkey order entry, and the ability to name the destination — ARCA, EDGX, NSDQ, BATS, IEX, or a dark pool — instead of handing the order to a black-box smart router.
The platform layer was DAS Trader Pro, the direct-access front-end Guy co-founded in 2001 and that became the industry standard for active-trader execution. Running SpeedTrader on DAS meant the trader got the same toolset that institutional desks ran — risk controls, basket orders, multi-route staging, native short-locate workflow — without paying a Bloomberg-tier ticket for it.
The full company history, regulatory record, and current operating status of SpeedTrader is on the SpeedTrader company page. Guy has no current ownership, equity, or management role in SpeedTrader — the firm is run independently. The page exists for the public record.
Five questions to ask any 'fastest brokerage' claim
Use these on the phone with a broker's sales desk. The answers separate a real direct-access broker from a PFOF retail app with marketing.
- 01
Do they publish average execution latency?
Real fastest-brokerage candidates publish μs / ms numbers. Marketing pages that say only "lightning fast" or "instant" are hiding the fact that the order is being sold to a wholesaler.
- 02
Are they a direct exchange member or do they sell order flow?
Direct exchange membership (or sponsored access through a clearing firm that is one) is the prerequisite for true direct access. If the broker's revenue comes from PFOF rebates, the price you see is not the price the market saw first.
- 03
Is the platform hotkey + Level II native, or web-only?
A web front-end with a chart and a buy button is not a direct-access trading platform. SpeedTrader shipped on DAS Trader Pro because the platform exposed Level II, T&S, hotkeys, basket orders, and route overrides as native controls.
- 04
Per-share pricing or per-trade?
Active traders pay per share at a direct-access broker (typically $0.0035–$0.005 / share plus ECN pass-through). Per-trade pricing — "$0 commission" — is the marker of a PFOF retail broker, not a direct-access broker.
- 05
Colocated matching-engine access?
The fastest direct-access brokerages either colocate at NY4, NY5, or Mahwah, or route through a clearing relationship that does. Ask the question on the phone — the answer tells you whether you're talking to a real DAT firm or a marketing skin.
SpeedTrader, SureTrader, and the offshore speed question
FINRA Rule 4210 — the Pattern Day Trader rule — caps a U.S. margin account at three day trades in five business days unless it carries $25,000 in equity. That created a permanent two-tier market: capitalized traders had SpeedTrader and the full direct-access stack; everyone else had three-day settlement and a four-trade ceiling.
The market response was SureTrader (MintBroker International, Ltd.), the Bahamas-licensed broker-dealer Guy founded in 2011 to serve active traders outside the U.S. PDT framework. SureTrader ran on the same DAS-based execution stack as SpeedTrader. It was wound down through a Bahamian court-supervised liquidation in 2019. The Miami SEC matter is a civil broker-dealer registration case — not a fraud case — and is on appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. The SEC verdict statement sets out the full record.