Recent content by traders

Hi, I want to warn all (potential) non US IB Customers that IB is busy raising margin on European listed ETFs which are relatively liquid to European standards which is related to US "Ready Market" regulations. I got my first notification in september (see below), and I received an...

Yes I did sign up early july, and there is security lending activity starting last friday. Currently 5 XLU shares are lent out against $175 collateral for a net fee rate of 0.06% (wow that will be a shocking amount :) ). All this info appears in new Activity Statement sections which you...

Yes now it is. It is part of the Trading Permission matrix. (search in the Trading Permission matrix on 'Yield', and click the box)

This WebService seems to work again. Strange it didn't work for over 3 days. Down for maintenance I guess.

Hi, IB has a "Web Service" to request Customized (XML) Reports. Do more people experienced problems with this web service? A WebService request is executed in the form of...

Yes, this is also what happened during the 2008 crash. E.g. they raised margin for closed end funds, and small ETFs. However this was announced some days before or executed in several steps (e.g. they raised margin from 25% to 100% (so no margin) for illiquid etfs/cefs but they did this is in 3...

No, IB need to change the port it is using. Currently TWS is using port 4000 to communicate with IB. They need to change this to port 80 (http/webbrowser) or port 443 (better, https). Also using port 80/443 is solving the issue that corporate firewalls are blocking other ports (so this port...

Probably because encryption is too difficult for retail clients. You have private keys, public keys, encryption alogrithm. And if this is not enough you need version x.y.z from PGP, because else it doesn't work and even if you have x.y.z you need to click here and there to get it working. Even...

IB works with a Universal Account. You can select your base-currency (e.g. EUR). However this base currency is only for reporting purpose. If you 'native' currency is USD, and you want EUR (or something else) you still need to enter into a EURUSD transaction to get EUR instead of USD. So...

What is the clearing firms of Interactive Brokers in their major markets?

Very COOL Beta!!

Hi, To reduce Broker Bankruptcy Risk, I am looking a broker which competes with IB (yeah I know the SIPC and Lloyds story). What are my options? Which brokers is similar to IB so: - No relationship to IB (market making/clearing/etc) - Deep discount pricing model -...