Interactive Brokers - experiences and opinions

...ups..

Hello Nader, I appreciate your answer! Can you post an URL where I can create such a normal account? I followed the signs on their webpage and came to the universal one without even a single sign towards the normal account...

So if I got it right, with IB you pay the spread PLUS the fee x 2 (since it's a round way operation -get in and get out of the trade)?

there is a group on yahoo for interactivebrokers , some employees of IB are members of this group you can ask them anything ,(ibusers)

right! spreads are very tight however! you can see them on the demo plattform

Unfortunately, I don't know the URL for opening a normal account, sorry for that....


Thanks,

Nader

it is because it does not exist!
they wrote back to me: "Unfortunately we don't offer a pure Forex account."

Is anybody trading forex with a life account at IB?
I had a look the demo quotes, and it seems that the
demo quotes for forex have a delay from about 6 to 7 hours. (?)
Below is a picture from metatrader quotes and ib quotes at the
same time.
Chris

they write on their webpage about the delay. Read carefully

I see that the spread on the EUR/USD from IB is 1.5 pips. That is the same price you usually get with Oanda execpt during major news release and on weekends. So since the spread looks the same for both companies wouldn't it be cheaper to trade through Oanda since they do not charge any commission on top of the spread?

Hi Zazzy, i know the normal quotes delay is 15 min with the demo TWS.
But I found 6 hours for forex spot quotes very extrem. So back to my
question, is anybody trading forex with a life account and are the forex
quotes reliable? BTW I thing IB is a very good universal an cheep broker.
Chris

to get the clear picture you should compare less popular pairs

Ok, finally, this interactve brokers issue came to an end at least to me...I called them yesterday, talked with a guy named Gerald, and he almost answered everything I wanted to ask about..However, I haven't asked him about thier forex related trading as I don't intend to trade currencies through them, or at least, not on my plan yet....

The main questions I asked were if they open accounts for Egyptian citizens and residents or not (This was a normal Yes), if they need tax exemption forms (Another normal Yes), and the last question if they accept wire transferes from my Bank (The NSGB), (And it was a normal Yes as long as the NSGB accepts wiring to US banks)....

So, once again I went back to their website and I found that it's full of details which I missed during my last visit....

If anyone needs to ask this guy regarding anything, please PM for his direct phone number....


Thanks,

Nader

I have an Oanda account as well as IB and out of curiosity cam e across the following observations....

Oanda have just about fixed spread during normal trading times, eur/usd 1.5 gbp/usd 3.

Now IB's will vary but it is 1-1.5 and 2-3 (eur/usd gbp/usd).

So it will all depend, sometime IB will beat out Oanda even with the comission.

However if you trade news go with IB. They drop their spread down to near normal in half the time Oanda does. IB will back to 5 or less while oanda is still at 10 pip spread.


As for a general comment on IB... so far no complaints.

Same for Oanda.

Both suffer from one major odrawback that the charting is not much more than basic.

Both can be traded from non Windows environments if you like thinking out of the box. ;-)

Thanks Lofie for the info...I am currently waiting for the account approval from IB...


Thanks,

Nader

One thing to remember with IB is that if your account currency is different from either of the currencies in the pair you are trading then they double the margin requirement from 2% to 4%.

E.g. if your account is USD and you trade EUR/JPY they calculate the margin requirement as if this was 2 positions (USD/EUR and USD/JPY), even though in reality the risk is not doubled.

This may or may not matter to you depending on your position sizes and account balance.

If your account is USD denominated and you only trade currencies against the USD then this does not affect you.

My account is approved but I haven't sent any money yet, actually I cannot operate their weird TWS. I cannot find the option to see currency rates. Have you had the same problems?

pipmaker, I've had an Interactive Brokers account for quite a few years now. Their demo is not really for practising trading as much as for just learning HOW to use the platform without making mistakes in real trading.

Unlike other FX dealers/brokers, with IB IdealPro you can get on the bid or the ask and possibly be hit by another trader. It IS a very clumsy platform, and has a long learning curve but once you get the hang of it you can set up and make trades with true 1-click trading if you like. I haven't traded FX there for a few months, but I did have a weird problem where my profits on a USD/JPY trade were showing in my account as JPY even though I have a USD based account, and had to be manually converted through their straight FX conversion system IDEAL. I don't know if problems like that are still occurring, you might check with the forums on their own website and see if others had or are having similar problems.

Leib

To see quotes in the platform click on an empty line, type in the main part of the pair. Ie, for EUR/USD, type in Eur, hit enter, choose "Cash" at popup, then a screen with numerous choices pops up, Click on the line that says IdealPro USD, then click on "Add" at bottom of window, keep repeating for any other Euro crosses you want, DON'T choose the "IDEAL" choice unless you simply want to convert monies in order to be able to buy equities at foreign exchanges. IDEALPRO is the platform you want for trading FX, it has the leveraged choices, IDEAL is NOT leveraged.

When you've finished populating your TWS Click on the "Close" button at the bottom of the "Contract Selection" window, BTW, while you are using TWS, you might prefer to trade the FX Futures on Globex, although you are stuck with a straight 2% leverage, you have very low commissions per roundtrip, and again, you can be on the BID or the ASK and get hit,
Hope this helps
Leib

I went back through this thread and saw there were a couple of other questions that might have been confusing.

The $25,000 figure by coincidence is a significant number pertinent to two issues unrelated to each other.

In the United States, for a few years now, in order to be able to daytrade stocks and options more than 3 roundtrip trades within a 5 day period, one is required to maintain $25,000 in their account. If you have less than that amount in your account and you exceed that amount of trades you will acquire the title of "Pattern Day Trader" and your account will be locked and prevented from further daytrading for a period of 3 months. You can add money to, withdraw from, close positions and open new positions as long as you don't try to close positions on the same day. Most brokers' software won't allow a daytrade to take place if the trader has abused the rule. Interactive brokers software will not let the trader even get into the position of possibly acquiring that title unless their account balance has that $25,000 minimum.

This rule does NOT apply to trading futures contracts of any kind, nor Forex.

One can open an account with $2000.00 and that amount MUST be maintained or IB will not allow you to open new positions until the account balance is brought back up to $2000.00.

The OTHER issue where $25,000.00 comes up is that it happens to be the MINIMUM amount that can be traded on the IDEALPRO Forex trading exchange. Think of it as in between the well known mini FX trade of $10,000.00 and the standard lot of $100,000.

Just like you would need 100 dollars in an FX account with 100:1 leverage to trade a Mini or $1000.00 to trade a regular full size lot, so too with IB you would need $500.00 LEVERAGED at 50:1 available to acquire a $25,000.00 position - so your $2000.00 account could get 4 of these in different pairs or the equivalent of ONE standard 100k lot if you leveraged your entire $2000.00 account balance.

I hope this helped straighten out that issue,
BTW - You really have to be a glutton for punishment to use IB - the platform is NOT user friendly, not intuitive, the customer service ppl just plain SUCK although they know their business. On the other hand, once you get the platform figured out you tend to fall in love with it and you won't need their obnoxious customer service reps + most questions can and will be answered quickly enough by other users in their forums - although if their is an URGENT issue - you'll just have to pick up the phone.

+there are numerous free API's that use their data for creating good charting/trading packages

PS - since I haven't traded there for a while I'm not sure if they fixed this weird issue - they were treating their IDEALPRO as sort of a glorified money conversion system rather than as a 'trade' per se. Therefore once you entered a 'postion' your order disappears off the screen and your are apprised elsewhere of how much of currency you 'own'. You are not shown a P&L or an unrealized P&L although you CAN see changes in your account balance when the system updates that information every couple of minutes - yes, NOT in real time. This is one of the reasons why I haven't used their system for a few months - I just couldn't stand not being apprised in real time where my trades were holding.

This is NOT the case for equities, options or futures contracts, with those you always are apprised in real time of your positions.

Hope all this helped, if you want to talk to traders live who are using TWS you can go to http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ht...s_chat_fg.html

and ask them if TWS still has these funky weirdnesses about them vis a vis IDEALPRO exchange. However, just to make life simple most IB users that I know only trade the Globex Forex futures if they want to dabble in FX even though the pair offerings are much fewer than IDEALPRO.

Good trading,
Leib