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You can open as many accounts as you like, it's just that they have to be Universal now apparently. That doesn't stop you from trading just commodities in one, and just stocks in the other. Can you describe more clearly your problem with fractions and decimals? It seems to be aimed at people...

Chad: So you post it again? Please don't blatantly advertise here - this is a place where traders come to talk to each other. Unless you trade 3M shares/month or routinely have individual NYSE trades greater than 5000 shares, your commissions are not better than IB's retail commissions...

Why does it matter where they are located? You can trade with Interactive Brokers http://www.interactivebrokers.com from anywhere, though they happen to be in Chicago (as well as elsewhere in the world).

Does anyone have an official answer as to what the rules are? It says that 50% applies in the 10 minute span from 15:50 to 16:00, and 25% the rest of the time (i.e. the other 23+ hours). That's not the way it seems to be working though.

Levi: Thanks. Good info.

Lev: Can you elaborate on why the SEC allows you to not be registered? I was under the impression (as, apparently, is IB) that if you trade for people that are "clients", you had to be registered.

This morning's fiasco was yet another occurrence of the same old Alternet (UUNet) routing problem that's been happening periodically for over a year. If the path between you and your destination includes the *.NYC.* Alternet routers, you were probably affected. Unfortunately, for much of the...

You have to buy it (from the CBOE "store"). It's not expensive (around $10). I have a copy. It is also available (along with most other exchanges' rules) online at www.complianceintl.com, which has a free trial. I'm guessing the retro-active price improvements happen when a trade occurs...

The way I read it, they're capping your buying power based on the previous night's equity, not letting you make use of today's trading profits today. This reinstates a restriction that existed before the PDT rule change. For example: I have $50K cash as of last night's statement. I make...

This may sound stupid, but do the new pages have contracts listed on them? TWS will not save empty pages (or blank lines at the end of pages).

It may depend on where you are, what exactly you mean by offshore, and what you want to trade, but many combinations are OK at IB, with US$2.40 commish (4.80 round turn). http://www.interactivebrokers.com

For a stock to be shorted, it has to be _borrowable_. Any stock held in a typical margin account, regardless of how much margin (e.g. 100%) is required, can be lent to other firms, at the holding clearing firm's discretion. If your clearing firm can borrow it, and it's not against their...

In general, it shouldn't matter if your broker fails - the clearing firm holds the money, and you can often start trading again quickly through another broker that uses that clearing firm, if for nothing else than to liquidate your positions. The SIPC and additional insurance are covering the...

What time of day? I think IB only makes a market from 08:00-20:00 EDT (but check their web site to be sure). Other IB traders sometimes post bids/offers outside those hours. If you really want to do the trade, you could post your sell order and see if someone takes it. If it's at least EUR125K...

IB allows both. Short to long is a single order, both in the front-end and in execution. Long to short is split into two simultaneous orders - one sell long and one sell short. They also are "investigating" bullets, since it appears that there is no particular reason it can't be done for retail.

Of course, the best solution would be for IB to accept and dispatch wire transfers in multiple currencies, regardless of the account's base currency. This allows users to obtain the maximum benefit of IB's narrow FX spreads, avoiding ever paying the banks their spread.

Except that you're charged margin interest on balances in other than your primary currency, right? So, you have to either pay the commish and spread to convert profits back to base currency routinely, or eat the margin interest for some period of time until you convert. It would then seem better...

DEF mentioned being on the same side of the market as TMBR as being a reason for not getting many TMBR fills. It occurs to me that this is probably a good place to be :-) It sure would be nice if we (IB customers) could actually add a line to TWS for TMBR for NYSE stocks and be able to see...

nitro & DEF: You've convinced me that I'm happy to have only a cat :) I'd like simply to be able to enter trades in one TWS instance for an account other than the one with which it is primarily associated. This ability appears to already be in TWS (there is a Loose Accounts section in the ini...

I wouldn't call it empty. In any software product, particularly one as fluid as a trading platform, there is sometimes a discrepancy between when features are published and when they are rolled out. This is usually to everyone's benefit, since a preliminary limited release will usually result in...