Interactive Brokers - experiences and opinions

Does anybody have experience in trading leveraged forex for your IRA account at Interactive Brokers?

I was told that the IRA accounts cannot trade leveraged forex at IB.

DID YOU CALL AND ASK THEM

Statistically speaking, what's the average spread for their G7 pairs and others exotic like SEK, NOK, SGD, KWD,etc?

Thanks

Does anyone know how to (if) you can display interest accruals (short & long) on IB's TWS platform? Trying to keep track of the swap when trading fx positions.

Thanks!

hello folks,

trading with Interactive Brokers at the moment, but I cant place conditional stop orders.

example:
price now 1.5850

if price goes down to 1.5825 a buy stop order will be submitted to buy @ 1.5850.

any other broker can do this trick???

thanks

dont you mean buy limit order?

Regarding order types I don`t know any broker offering more/better than IB. Maybe you just check for "order types": "Limit If Touched" should do the trick.

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en...b_entity%3Dllc

There are 50 (FIFTY) order types with IB

I have been having ongoing problems with TWS charts on Interactive Brokers. If you have posted or checked out the Interactive Brokers Features Poll (the only way they will accept feedback about TWS) you've seen that the same problems have been reported for years and never addressed.

Anyone using a TWS build newer than September 14th, 2012 knows by now that their trend lines are not saved when close a chart window, forcing you to use older builds. Technical support reports that they are still "working on it". Regardless of whether you use a new build or not, trend lines are not rendered reliably which anyone relying on TWS charts needs to be aware of.

I've attached a side-by-side 5-minute chart of EUR.JPY from my two-monitor computer to demonstrate a common rendering problem. Except for the chart on the right having moving averages and MACD, the charts should be identical as they are both being rendered simultaneously, but note the differences I have highlighted. Refreshing the charts makes no difference, and moving a line in one chart may still redraw the line incorrectly in the other.



Trend lines will also change by themselves over time, and I estimate that trying to place a parallel line has a 1 in 3 chance at best at not changing when you place it.

Free alternatives like NetDania charts don't save trend lines and render incorrectly when changing time scales, and though ProfessionalCharts allow you to save your data, the rendering is completely unreliable not only when changing time scales, but even when you simply "zoom" in or out within the same time scale. Additionally, all data is "universally" shared, so trene lines, Fibonacci, etc. that you draw on charts with similar data ranges (i.e. AUD/CAD and USD/CAD) will appear on both charts.

I would like to know what alternatives or workarounds are other people are using.

use Ninja Trader or amibroker... makes life with IB so much nicer! Book Trader with Ninja there's a combo!

Thank you for the suggestions. I am looking at the Ninja Trader website now.

Are you currently using Ninja Trader with Interactive Brokers or is that just a general suggestion? If the former, have you ever experienced any charting errors as I'm concerned the problem may be with Interactive Brokers data as I have also noticed inconsistencies when comparing actual price levels against NetDania and ProfessionalCharts?

TBH i never had issues using the two as Ninja runs off IB price feed. I have no personal expi with ami though. You have to plug Ib into ninja. for FX its smooth but on some futures like the KOSPI200 you need to create the data point in Ninja. Not hard i managed to do it and I am tech unsavy! I used IB with Ninja for 2 years. well runing netdania with ib will have it as the feeds and spreads are differnt. With Ninja you can set FX charts to 1/2 pip spreads so there's no diff.

cheers

I've been thinking of making the switch to IB as well. But when i looked at their trading platform i got scared.
I need to learn how to use ninja or amibroker. I like to trade off the charts.

Price-wise, Interactive Brokers cannot be beaten here in Canada and it fares quite well against other brokers in the US, but they are clearly not interested in updating their outdated charting software. They reported $61.8 million net income in 2011 with $1.7 million in cash (I'm looking forward to seeing their 2012 numbers in a couple of months -- the founder and CEO Thomas Peterffy personally spent millions supporting Republicans during the election and I'm sure the shareholders footed a hefty bill as well) and with rising competition they are going to lose market share if they do not start updating their software.

Technical support is very good (live chat in particular) except when your problem is with TWS (their software), in which case if the problem isn't solved by clearing your Java cache (it's Java-based) or loading a previously saved profile (it auto-backups every day, keeping one week plus any manual saves) or changing a setting (50/50 chance of getting a techsupport agent who knows the software inside and out) they may get you to try things for an hour or so until you finally give up -- they have never once generated a support ticket nor have they solved a single problem that I have reported.

Overall, I would recommend Interactive Brokers, you just can't rely on the charts for pin-point accuracy. I use Questrade for RRSP and TFSA stock investing, and if it were not for the savings over every other Canadian broker that provides RRSP and TFSA I would avoid them as every time they have done a stock-split the price was not correctly reflected in the software so you need to review your portfolio regularly.

TPOT,

Like all people first time you see TWS it scares the hell out of u and it's carp to use.... IMO TWS is nothing more then a watchlist and daily reslut tracker. FX Trader is nice but Book trader IMO is the best platform on offer with IB. You can buy Ninja trader out right and trade IB prices off the chart I have heard.

In the last 8 years I have been using Interactive Brokers and had some minor accounts with a few mt4 brokers. Recently I have had an ea made and, yes, that runs on mt4, which made me look for a reputable mt4 broker. Being with IB for so long and reading FF for so long, it was difficult to get a grasp on mt4 brokers. There is little agreement in broker threads, some posters are positive, some negative. Things like requotes, withdrawing problems, disconnections, funny islands regulation, etc. all come by when reading about mt4 brokers. In my search for a broker I finally made a list of three brokers that could be of interest and there are probably far more good brokers, but I like a combination of narrow spreads, low commissions, reliable execution and sound regulation as IB has.

Just as I had made up my mind, I did another attempt finding an mt4 IB bridge (I have done so in the past and never found anything that would do it for me), now I have found something. It's a piece of software that instantaneously transmits mt4 orders/executions to IB. I am testing it right now and will do so in the coming weeks to see if it's as reliable as it seems now.

I am a little bid an IB addict and find their spreads overall better then most of what I have seen. They have low commissions and are imo trustworthy (customer for 8 years) and very well regulated. If I look at the EURJPY, the spread with commission included varies between 0.7 and 1.5 pips most of the day and I can't complain about executions or fills. IB is a trading platform and the charting is not their core business to say the least. MT4 suits me for charting and now also for an ea. A combination of those two would be great for me.

To get to my point: if you have the money to fund an IB account (no mini accounts offered) and prefer to use IB above other brokers and still want to use mt4 for your charting/orders/ea's, you could google and find what I found. I am not gonna provide the name or address, it's not hard to find yourself and somehow this post would directly go to the commercial section, which would be a shame and stupid as I am a trader and not a re-seller or whatsoever. I think that this software, when thoroughly tested as being reliable, could be of great value (although you have to pay for it). Trading 5 lot's a day in and out would save me about $80,- per day compared to the three other brokers I mentioned.

Just to make sure, I can't say how reliable the software or the creator/company is and I don't know how long they exists or how long they will stay. If interested, google it and get yourself a trial version.

Hope anyone finds this useful.

Are you saying you have no affiliation with said bridge but you are happy with its performance? Does it work with other IB quote sources besides forex? Not trying to stir the pot but why would not reference the software if you are mentioning it at all? Curious...

Curiosity is fine if you want so. I really don't know if they support other products besides forex, I am only interested in fx and haven't looked any further then attaching it for fx.
Why would I reference it? By doing so this thread could be banned to the commercial section and that wouldn't really help anyone that wants to trade through Interactive Brokers but wants mt4 for charting/ea's etc.
Why am I mentioning it? Because I think (when tested reliable) that it's of great value for what I do and I think it could be for a lot of other traders. I am probably not the only one using mt4 for charting/ea but preferring to trade with IB.

By the way, the ff moderator changed the original tittle of this thread, which can be very helpful.

May I ask which 3 Brokers you had in your List?

Atc, lcg, lmax

Nothing wrong with LMAX and ATC I have small accounts with both