Interactive Brokers - experiences and opinions

I don't agree at all. They're the best broker I have used and never planning to change.

very professional with all the right tools needed.

and no I am not an employee.

very nice and accurate review! I second every word of this. I am 4 years with IB and very happy with their services. Only yesterday i had a problem , I was slipped twice, very rare for them! Hope it's only the increased volatility of recent days. I was trading eur/yen with 700k lots.

Woohoo! I had been waiting a long time for that one. The most active london stocks on 10% margin. The prices and spreads track the underlying with no games in between. the commissions go around 0.08% for GBP 1M per month volume and lower commissions from thereon. You can even add in your own quotes in the limit order book from what i've read. The only reason i didn't dabble in cfds that companies that offered them had dodgy practices. that seems to have changed with IB in the fray now.
Check it out guys
Good trading.

I'd appreciate some advice from traders with Interactive Brokers accounts. I gather IB doesn't automatically rebalance misc. non base currency amounts other than <$5. So, say I trade GBPUSD in a GBP base account and make a profit - it ends up in the account as USD. How do you recommend handling that so as to minimise the fiscal and spread costs of reconverting to GBP?

Am I in just the same situation if I trade the CME 6B GBPUSD future with IB?

Max

1) I don't know.
2) No. But 6B is a half-sized contract, with the same commission - not a good deal. (62,500 and $6.25 per tick where 6E is 125,000 and $12.50 per tick)

1) Simply reconvert when you need to, rather than every trade. In the end, your overall costs should be lower (vs typical auto-conversion at other brokers). Also, try to only convert when your conversion amount is over the amount required for IdealPro, to take advantage of the better spread vs Ideal. (GBP 17k)

2) Yes. P&L for that contract is in USD.

Thanks guys - I guess there's also the issue of converting non base funds at the best market price so e.g. it may be better to convert USD 20K on IDEAL to GBP at a 4 pip spread when it looks like GBPUSD is at a low, than waiting till you have USD 25K to convert on IDEALPRO at a 1 pip spread, but GBPUSD is 50 pips higher? IB say that 'in general' the difference in spread on IDEAL and IDEALPRO will not be more than 3 pips (but I'll try not to convert in the middle of Non farm Payrolls!).

As an example of the practicalities: say my account base is GBP, I trade only GBPUSD, and build up some USD after a while. I'd want to include that USD in my trading funds total for calculating optimal trade size via max % risk per trade. So:

Q: does IB account management somewhere display a base currency equivalent figure for total funds in all currencies, or do you in practise just do a back of the envelope calculation for this?

Q: say after a few months my account has 50% GBP plus other major currencies, and I want to trade GBPUSD. Would IB just look at my GBP balance to calc authorisation for that trade, or do they look at the base currency equivalent of all my currencies put together?

Q: I spend money in GBP and USD. so would it make sense to hedge the currency risk by holding my IB account roughly half in each currency (if that works with what I need to trade)?

I guess those with a good crystal ball for medium to long term movements can profit by effectively making a position of their whole account and switching base currency into the one they're bullish on. It's an interesting thought that on IB you can effectively trade your whole account 24/7 by switching base currency, while doing sub trades on other currencies within it.

Sorry to ask you guys for so much help on all this, but IB appear to be very wary of giving any base currency replies which could be seen as 'advising' clients, so they refer me back to their helpbase, which I don't find comprehensive enough on this subject. IB sure has a steep learning curve, I'm just realising how much you can do with an IB account...if you do it right.

Max

Does anybody know of any brokers that have executions? I had a Sell Limit order today that was totally ignored by IB. It was totally unacceptable.

The sell price was at 1.02525 and the price went as low as 1.0248 and it never got executed. And then the funny thing is the price went back up to 1.0253 and 1.0254 and I saw my order in FXTrader and it still didn't get executed. It's as if my order was invisible and meanwhile I see the bid size volume was several million and my trade size was just 2 standard lots.

I talked to their customer service and first they said my order was never submitted and then after half of an hour, they finally admitted that they did receive my order but because it never reached my price so my order was never executed. Total bullshit! The rep on the line had no idea what she was talking about.

It's happened once before but it hasn't happened for a long time. I am not staying with a broker that can't even execute a simple limit order when there is clearly enough liquidity.

This doesn't make sense. A sell limit is for execution at the limit price or higher. If price was already higher than the sell limit at the time you submitted the order, it would have been instantly executed.

Exactly! This is what I don't get. WHY was my order not executed when the price was already higher than my limit price? My limit was for 2 standard lots at 1.02525 and the bid was already at 1.0253 for 3 million and I already saw my order on the "Ask" side in FXTrader but the price went right pass my order to 1.0254 bid and it never got executed. It's as if my order never existed.

I asked their supervisor to call me because the rep couldn't explain it and insisted it's my error. I am still waiting for the supervisor's call.

If you or anybody know of any brokers with faster execution, I would appreciate it knowing. I am not sticking with IB anymore after this experience.

Any resolution?

Hello

I got some missing quotes for the last Monday from Interactive Brokers Eur.Usd chart. Have you experimented the same kind of problem?

Last Monday was an holiday here in Canada, is it the reason? Transactions did occurred somewhere else in the world so I should get the quotes for those.

Any information or clue appreciated

Martin

For nearly 48 hours now the Interactive Brokers forex historical data servers have been down. I haven't been able to trade 4 sessions so far and about to start the 5th session without any idea of when a resolution might come.

Worst part is there is zero effort to communicate with customers and provide them updates. Even now the system status page on the IB website shows all green. Which is complete bullshit because the servers are down. I have spoken to customer service many times now and those poor idiots are completely clueless. All they can say again and again is "We are aware of the issue. We don't have an ETA". Forget about communicating with their customers, IB seems to be failing to even update their own staff.

Worst customer experience from broker I have ever had. I did not expect this level of incompetence. I recommend that you all stay away from Interactive Brokers for your Forex needs. Their pricing is premium but service is worse than a micro lot bucket shop broker operating out of a basement in Azerbaijan.

Hey IB reps, here is some feedback for you - Instead of spending millions of dollars on advertising on Bloomberg constantly why don't you spend that money on a proper System Status webpage and maybe even splurge on an email alert system?


PS: Your Java client Trader workstation software is bloated piece of crap.


/rant off

nothing new.

i feel your pain..

yet, it is the most safest broker i've known...

true, you can also add fcstone, adm, newedge, pfgbest.

any1 know how safe alpari UK is?

i didnt realise unsafe was something associated with brokers..im getting a bit concerned now

are you serious

11,760 posts and 46 vouches you're realizing that just now?