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Depends on your base currency and the currencies you are trading. For example, if you have a USD account and buy X Euros and then sell X Euros, you shouldn't see any further changes (unless there's some delayed financing charge for an overnight position). But now let's say you buy AUD with...

A few months ago one of the retail forex brokers was going public and provided some insight in their prospectus. Unfortunately I don't recall their name. But they made it clear in their statement of risks that their success depended on continually replacing existing customers as the losers...

Samovar - You need to do a daily reconciliation of your account and state specifically what line in IB's daily statement is off. Just saying there's a difference won't cut it. Exactly what line item contains the difference? Is it sales/purchases, interest, dividends, or what? I track my...

You can't have a negative currency balance with a Roth IRA. Buying USD.EUR is the opposite of buying EUR.USD. These are actual currency moves and would cancel each other out, not leaving you with any Euros for your other purchases. Plus the spread on USD.EUR will be wide because it's not a...

If you're going to be fairly active with your trading, I would just leave the EUR in your account. IB isn't paying any interest on the USD so no reason to incur a daily commission. There's currency risk of holding EUR but that can work both ways.

You need to check the interest rates paid (from IB to you) versus the interest rates charged (paid by you to IB). These are posted on their web site. You'll find that for most currency pairs you'll pay more in interest than you'll earn on the loan (if any interest is even paid). In a few...

The last one I found was from April 1. I had 0.28 GBP and IB wiped it out and gave me 0.43 USD. It showed up in my activity statement as a trade. Now the joke is that they do this based on your actual cash balance EXCLUDING accrued interest. So first they bring it to zero and then the next...

IB will periodically convert small balances back into your base currency at day end rates without charging a commission. You don't need to do anything for this to happen. But I'm not sure what the upper limit is for this. Probably just a few $ worth of each foreign currency.

Don't lose any sleep over it. Good PR for the member of Congress that put it in a bill but I don't think the Administration's Treasury honchos even support it. It would kill the U.S. exchanges (like those in Obama's home town) by driving trading offshore.

The conventional wisdom seems to be to report forex P/L just like futures on form 6781. That will give you a 60/40 long term/short term capital gains split. No details needed. But would appreciate comments from anyone who's gotten conflicting advice. Seems to be a gray area at this time.

I still don't understand why IB closes off NZD.USD trading for several hours. They use to do the same for AUD.NZD but recently changed it. It now trades 23:45 per day (although the spreads widen after 1pm Eastern Time).

My IB account had been open for several years. Then my SecureCard broke and I needed a new one. This required sending IB a copy of my ID which they did not have on file. Answering your specific question - IB's security is top notch and lots of us are willing to accept the hassle to sleep a...

They are there already except about twice a week I get a note from IB telling me they've been updated. As I recall, updates for 2008 continued until mid-2009.

You're not going to get a settlement from IB for this. SMART routing has it's advantages and disadvantages. Generally it works out OK but on occasion the algorithim they use places your trade at the "wrong" exchange (i.e. the one where your order could have been executed). If they could only...

I saw the ad and was surprised as well that IB was using it. The whole strategy falls apart when interest rates go up resulting in a higher margin rate and a reduced price of your securities.

They look at your settled cash balance each night in each currency. If a negative value, you are charged interest for the night on that currency (or 3 nights if it's a weekend). I'm not sure of the exact formula but basically for a small USD balance, take the balance x 1.61% / 360 days. For...

You are charged the 1.61% only on your overnight balances. If a day trade, then you haven't borrowed anything.

I think there's just way too little volume to make it worthwhile. The big players make purchases and hold long term. There's just not that much bond trading (relative to stocks).

Interactive Brokers displays the bid/ask from NYSE or the Bond Desk. The spreads are generally terrible on all but the most traded bonds and frequently there's no bid and/or ask displayed. If you want to sell at a decent price you'll have to put in an ask price and just wait it out. As long...

No problem for me. Did the price trade through your limit order? The only time I get partial fills is when my limit order is hit by another IB customer.