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In addition to commissions, you have to consider the quality of the execution. Does the broker get the best price? How often is there price improvement? Each broker has some data on this hidden somewhere on their web site. It's difficult to compare but it's something to consider and a reason...

The daily spread isn't what I'm talking about. It's the change between quotes. The Euro normally only moves 1/2 to 1 pip between quote changes. So you wouldn't expect price improvement, or at most, 1/2 pip. But on some of the crosses, the quotes frequently move 2 to 3 or more pips between...

I have a different theory as to why there's price improvement. There's no central market place for forex so if your broker is going to execute it in the interbank market (i.e. with a bank), the order remains on the broker's books until your limit price is reached or exceeded. The broker then...

Spread isn't everything. With the increased volatility in the currency markets, I'm getting a high percentage of my limit orders executed by IB with price improvement. Usually it's small but sometimes it's 1 to 2 pips! More than enough to cover their commission of 0.2 pips. I expect that...

And they aren't sent to you. You need to retrieve them from Account Management at their web site.

USD/CAD this afternoon has been 2 to 3 pips.

Sounds like the $88 is a coincidence. You should be getting the interest earned each month, at which time your accrued iinterest will go to zero.

Day orders will stay green after the market closes for awhile and then be deleted from TWS before the market opens again. You should not need to do anything.

On a market order, I blink and the order is filled. Limit orders sometimes get executed about 1/2 second before my display shows the price has been reached.

Yesterday I noticed that the December 08 EUR futures contract was about 20-22 pips higher than the cash market. When I checked this morning, it was in the 8-10 pip range. With no change in interest rates overnight, what would account for this? Expectations of an interest rate change?

Classic case of sell first and ask questions later. I grabbed 3 points but could have had 10+ had I found a news release to explain what was happening and didn't bail out early. CEG has a $150M credit line from Lehman but it's small compared to their overall liquidity.

I've noticed the same thing a couple of times. Price moves to my bid/offer but doesn't execute. However, it's only at my price for a fraction of a second before moving back. I've never complained about this to IB because I think I understand why this happens, and if I'm right, it's not IB's...

Thanks. Glad I'm not seeing things. We'll watch for next few days and expect to see shrinkage in spread.

I noticed in IB this morning that spreads seem wider than normal. For example, AUD.CAD is 2-3 pips versus 1 normally and EUR.USD is 2 pips versus 1 normally. Is anyone noticing this with other brokers? If not, perhaps IB has lost one or more of their participating banks.

Except they are likely both worthless. So what's going to cause a price spread to develop?

Another thing you have to consider is that someone else is on the opposite side of that trade. When they didn't receive notification of a trade bust in an orderly manner, they would have felt free to liquidate their position and may have done so. It doesn't excuse CME if they weren't properly...

If the common stock gets wiped out, I would expect bond and preferred stock holders to also get hit. They would probably return something but well less than par. As a guess, less than 50 cents on the dollar.

I don't think you can change your base currency. Everything is referenced to this currency for accounting purposes. But you can hold securities or cash in any currency and they are valued at each day end based on prevailing exchange rates.

It is actually quite simple. Do what ever you want in your IB margin account. Buy/sell stocks, buy/sell your base currency into a foreign currency, buy/sell crosses not involving your base currency, etc. At the end of the day, your account has positive and/or negative cash balances in each...