Anyone used Interactive Brokers ? ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter teenie_weenie
  • Start date Start date
AA, as you know from, we are in negotiations to increase the level of insurance provided above the required levels. concerns about having larger positions than SIPC insurance aside, the reason I keep bringing up the affiliates of IB is that IB uses many of the same order routing mechanisms that it's proprietary side uses. The group designing the code thus probably has more experience in electronic routing and trading than any other firm in the world.

Looks can be deceiving, we are keenly aware if we do not provide fast accurate fills and/or our service is not available, we do not collect revenues and will lose clients. With this in mind we take great pride in our reliability, network capacity, product depth, and the level of service we are providing to our clients. Feedback of late has been tremendously positive.

I find it interesting that you mention that you would even consider switching to Schwab - a firm that is selling it's order flow - given your comments on this subject. Even with their selling order flow, they still charge significantly more than IB per contract. Add slippage from selling the flow to the equation and you're no longer on the same playing field.
 
def - I didn't say Schwab, I said CyberX.

You confuse (or perhaps you don't really) the fact that Schwab just bought Cybercorp, with Cybercorp selling order flow.

Since their CyberX platform provides direct order routing and execution, I find it interesting that you are trying to confuse the issue by mentioning Schwab.
 
def- I went through all the posts regarding IB here on the forum. What captured my attention finally, was your diligence and competence in answering all the ( very good )questions raised here about IB.
So I decided to give your Website a try and downloaded TWS demo.I also used the interactive help function on your website. It took less than a minute to have contact with one of your service-colleagues in the help-chatroom who was answering my questions.

TWS installation was easy and the program is running since 60 minutes now. I have done some "demo-trades" .

If your real executions are always as fast as within your demo - hey, you might probably get a new customer soon.
It took me longer to point the mouse on the bid / asks quote and on the T for trade as IB needed to execute.

The entry system is really so easy to use - just click on the bid or ask price change your price and volume if you like and confirm by using "T" - that's it.
What I miss : RT - charting, Level II quotes, times & sales etc. the usual daytrading tools you know.
But I understand, that TWS is your order-entry system and not yet a complete daytrading tool.
However, since you have already internet-integration implemented, adding some useful links to news services, etc. shouldn't be a problem.

What I don't like : I have to use 1024 x 768 with small fonts settings in order to use TWS properly. Within TWS this is not a problem, but when you switch to your regular browser window while trading, or to any other application, the tiny fonts are really a m...

I'll think about transferring part of my current account to IB.
My biggest concerns are also related to the insurance issues Archangel pointed out already.
Other thing which puzzles me a bit is, that some of IB customers, posting their experiences here or on SI boards, seem to be very happy, others sound like they are really frustrated.

I know from my own experience with Datek, that many people claimed they had problems, which I never had while trading with them. And I did a couple hundred trades with Datek since 1999.



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Good Trading
Privateer
 
Thanks for the response and constructive criticism. I'll point out a few things that may help.

First, the demo provides instant executions. In reality they may take a second or so longer but that is more of a function of the exchange system than anything else. For example, from Hong Kong I can execute an order in the BUND Futures (trade on Eurex System in Germany) in less than half a second while a globex (S&P) order takes a bit less than 2 seconds. Orders for options can be almost instantaneous but if the specialist pulls the plug on Autoex, the order could go to the floor and slow things down. Same system, different execution speed. We have spend a fortune on optimizing our order routing and believe no one is faster.

In the future, we most likely will add "trading tools" but the system was origanally provided soley for institutional clients (broker/dealers/fund managers) and these types of accounts do not desire the extras as they typically have a bloomberg or reuters at their disposal. So instead of initially adding these tools, we focused on our backend, speed and cost.

Screen resolution is an issue. I keep my screen at 1280x1024 and many customers use dual screens. Again, this issue will be addressed in the future but our efforts to date have been on creating a stable back end.

Insurance: If you have an open position, you are insured up to 500K. 400K in securities and 100K in cash. Until we add additional insurance, hopefully we add comfort by our reputation, and automatic liquidation of accouts that violate margin. And, if that does not give you enough comfort, there is plenty you can trade with the levels provided by SIPC coverage.

We did run into some growth issues in January - mainly we did not anticpate clients loading up all 33 pages with markets and using us as a free quote vendor. Since then we made programming changes and vastly increased our network capacity. The boards have been very quiet of late - and that's a good sign. Others, may not like a stand alone program and prefer a web browser. Others, want this and others want that. It is impossible to please all the people all the time. When serious issues arise, we are very quick to respond and address the issues. We have a great team of programmers with years of trading experience behind the scenes. In addition, the help desk has been beefed up and it has been very rewarding to see the positive comments regarding our level of service compared to when we started offering retail futures over 2 years ago. But, no one is perfect. We have often pondered why some clients are estactic about our service why others can never be satisfied. I believe part of it is due to the level of access that is now available (not just from us) compared to using a human broker. People demand perfection and the flaws of the system (especially NASDAQ) are now quite evident.

Enough for now. Hopefully, this responds to your comments.
 
i've been pleased as punch w/ ib from the get-go. i'm not a very active trader, but i've not had any problems. it is a crap shoot getting someone at the help-desk who has a clue, but i suspect that's not atypical. one thing i would like to see them change, however, is the margin reqmt's on naked stock opts. e.g. i sell naked puts on qqq; as margin is tied to the price of the underying, margin reqmts <i>increase</i> as the mkt moves away from my strike, and the value of the option decreases. in january (i think) sec amended rule 431, enabling merchants to base margin strictly on strike and prem of sht option. i e-mailed the help desk about this and got the response, "We use this strategy, so we can minimize the risk to us and the customer." zzzz. fact is, it still doesn't make sense.

that said... if that's the extent of my "complaints" then i guess things are going pretty well. i'd love to see IB add bond futures and opts on bond futures, as well as beans and bean opts, but i digress. thx for your responses def.
 
def, thanks for your explanations. Think I'll give IB a try. For what concerns additional feature in TWS - I already accepted the fact, that TWS is a trade-entry- / account monitoring system and not a daytrading-tool like Qcharts,eSignal or Realtick III.

There are plenty of those vendors out there and one should find the service most appropriate to his trading style.

After all, saving a lot of commisions may help to pay for Qcharts or eSignal. Nevertheless, as we all had and still have major or minor problems with the vendors mentioned above, I think many traders are really looking for a one stop solution - ideally with the broker they use.

I am quite sure, that these kinds of services will separate the successful brokers from the loosers in the future.

With a growing base of internet-traders around the world, it will become much more an issue to please also these retail customers by offering an easy to use and comprehensive trading environment as well as the necessary education to use it properly.

As you stated already, maybe even the Nasdaq and some ECN's have underestimated the fast growth of the internet-traders community and it's impacts on the current execution systems. We'll probably see more of the mentioned problems in the future especially on days with heavy trading volume.

Another fact seems to be, that many traders on the boards I've read are trying to trade OTC BB stocks or other thinly traded exotic issues and wondering or complaining that their order didn't get filled at the desired price or by MM XYZ.

Rarely saw any complaints about not getting filled on well known stocks
i.e YHOO, CMGI,DELL or stocks alike.

So I think it's the right strategy for IB, to focus on reliabilty of the system and providing hassle free access to it under all circumstances.




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Good Trading
Privateer
 
I just read through all 5 pages of this thread because I was sure that I would repeat a question that's already been answered. I can't believe no one has brought this up.

Is there any way to enter orders more efficiently? As it stands, after I type in the symbol, I have to click on the ask price if I want to buy. Then I have to right click on the price until I get the price I want, or try to find it on a pop-up menu.

This really isn't so bad compared to the quantity of the order. It starts out with 10,000 shares; then I have to right click on the 1 to make it a 0, change the first 0 to an 8 (again by right clicking twice), then change the second 0 to however many hundred shares I want to buy (right clicking one digit at a time), and then right clicking on the 8 until in is a 0. Of course, in the heat of the moment, I always screw something up.

The short of all this is that it takes me about a half minute to enter an order after I type in the symbol. A lot of times this isn't a problem, but the times that it is can be costly.

Def, is there any way to streamline this? Is there an upgrade in the future that will make order entry a lot easier? (Like where all you have to do is type in the number of shares you want.)
 
I believe the functionality you desire already exists with the order entry box.

but first.. the idea of clicking on the offer to buy and conversly on the bid to sell is quite simple.

Speed is most urgent when you want to hit or lift a market price. Therefore, the price you click on which becomes the default price is the market price where a trade will execute. If you want to buy at market, click on the offer and then the xmit key. That takes no time at all.

To change an order:
You can change size or price a few ways.
a: left click and drag on the size or price and a pop up menu with sizes and/or prices come up. Size increases are displayed in 100 share increments on the window and it takes no time at all to change a 100 lot to 1000 lot.
b: right click below or above the price to move it one tick up or down
c: click on the ORDER entry box after chosing your market and a box comes up where you can type in the size or price you wish. (this box is on each page. In this box you can also set up stop orders, limit orders, tag your trade, etc).

You can also set your default contract size via the setting menu. Different default sizes are available for options, futures, and stocks.

Personally, I find changing a price and/size via a drop down menu much easier and less error prone than typing manually. If you are clicking on an offer and want to lower your price a few ticks, I don't see how anything besides a drop down menu would be faster and more accurate. If you want to move the price much further away than the market, the order entry box should suffice.

Finally, there are speed keys you can set up. ie. you can define F2,F4 to equal buy, xmit.

In short, I think your difficulties may reside with the default size in the demo and not knowing about the order box.


 
def, mjt,

just want to let you know that I have signed up with IB ( after a quite interesting online registration process )
def has described the order entry process with TWS already and I can agree, if you use the scroll lists it's really much faster. No need to use the right-click functions or the orderbox to type in any prices and volumes. You can do this also in the demo.

I think the orderbox is a reserve in case the RT quote-service is down for any reason. Read a post in SI saying that even when the quoteservice is not working, you can still enter orders by using the box. ( of course you need a 2nd. quoteservice than, which I always have )

I have set my display now to 1024 x 768 and used windows default ( large fonts ) setting. This works fine with TWS and all other applications I use.
Looking forward to trade with IB in 2 weeks, after returning from a business-trip to Ireland. I'll let you know about my experiences.

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Good Trading
Privateer
 
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