Anyone used Interactive Brokers ? ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter teenie_weenie
  • Start date Start date
Hi def,

good to hear something about the new JAVA TWS. I have emailed my questions regarding details to the IB management recently, but haven't received any reply. I'll send you my questions by e-mail.

hsanson :
I don't know, what you are referring to when saying you have to remember keystrokes etc. I explained in another thread , that you can setup your preferences for trading with TWS. You can also assign certain actions to specific keys on your keyboard and you see these assignments right on your trading screen.

If you choose i.e. F2 to be the hotkey for buy-market , you'll see that assignment in one of the grey fields right above your account window.

If you want to buy, just click on the contract ( or stock / option ) and hit F2

More details about hotkeys see here :
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/html/tws/hotkeys.html

Here my answer to your IB / SOES Post :

"shanson : I don't know whether you have discovered it already : with TWS you can setup your trading preferences ( i.e. lot sizes for stocks and options ) and hotkeys for buy, sell, buy market, sell market etc.

I.e. you want to buy at a specific price displayed on the offer, you click on that price and the preferred lotsize is already in your order. Just hit T for transmit and that's it.
If you need to make a price adjustment before transmitting your order just click on the price field and use the scroll-list. Just in case you decide to buy more or less shares of the stock, click on the field were your lotsize is displayed and use the scroll list to increase or decrease your position.

I rarely used the Order-input field for buying or selling a stock. I use this only for stop-loss, stop-buy orders.

I have setup my sites in TWS as follows :

1 Site for each stock I follow, displaying all ECN's and the front months ATM Options ( these I'll have to adjust from time to time of course )
So you can see the volumes bid's and offer's on all markets for this particular stock.
Your sites list let's you switch rapidely between the various stocks. I follow usually not more than 6-8 Stocks at a time."

Probably it would be worthwhile for you to read the TWS manual again and find out, how to setup your preferences.
Preferences are safed automatically and you don't have to re-enter them each time you start TWS.

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/download/manual.htm

Although TWS doesn't offer all the bits & bytes of highly sophisticated platforms, it is for sure a real point and click platform.
Once having setup your preferences, just click on the offer or bid and than transmit - that's it. Don't know why you are making things more complicated than they really are ( typing in all order details )

regards &





 
I am new to trading and I had opened an account at cyber
corp $20.00 + each way is a very tuff way to learn on 100
shares... Interactive Broker is the most cost effective
way to trade 100 shares costs $2.00 round trip thats right $2.00 no extra charges...I am very happy with them so far.
 

Def,

May I ask you a couple of questions?

Sometime ago, you mentioned that IB might carry extra
insurance in addition to SIPC. Will it happen?
I am purely daytrading, so always 100% cash at the
end of day. It is not comfortable to know that only
100K will be protected if something happens.

I am wondering whether you are considering offering IRA
accounts?

A couple of days ago, my system didn't work, so I called
trading desk to close my open position. I know the extra
fee, and I'm fine with it. However, the trading desk
accepts only market order or marketable limit order.
The stock I had had large spread, over 1/2 point.
I really wanted to place a protective stop order. I was willing
to pay regardless of the actual execution of that stop order. But, I couldn't. I had to get out using the
market order. I don't know whether this is common practice
or not, but will it be impossible to change this for
your customers?

Thanks for your attention.
Although there are still some quote and execution delay
problems, I love your system.

WJ

 
I'm interested in opening an account at Interactive Brokers. Before I jumpstart the interesting application process, I would like to know if anyone knows how restrictive IB is in accepting accounts.

Glancing over this thread, I notice that IB users are professional in their attitude and knowledge. I have my fair share of investment experience, and I am an active trader, however, will IB reject my application solely on the criteria of age? I am a college student, currently not employed, with a decent amount of net worth. I recently read a review of IB which contained a customer comment stating that IB rejected his application, did not provide an explanation, and he believes that it was because of his age (19), despite having 20K net worth.

I will be going through the application process. Any helpful information or suggestions to my questions will be highly appreciated. If my application if rejected, I will stick with Datek, however, I am quite excited with the possibility of interacting with IB's technology at its low commissions. Wish me the best of luck, and happy trading.

Best Regards,

Jason
 
TraderWJ,

A while back I spoke with our treasurer who said he was in discussions with a number of insurers and thus I thought additional insurance was around the corner. I'm not sure what discussions, if any, are going on now but will check. Until then, you hopefully would receive comfort knowing that:
a: no trade can be initiated w/o captial upfront;
b: limits are set on each account based upon the available capital;
c: if a position violates maintenance margin, a portion of the position is automatically liquidated to bring the position under compliance. The process is automated and thus "the check is in the mail" will not help.

As a result, the probability of a capital default are greatly reduced.

I am told IRA's are coming. Last time I was in the states, it was a relatively high priority. However, since then I think it fell back a bit as adding global products (european and asian markets) and the java station rose ahead of the queue.

I am guessing here but I believe the policy on the help desk is to minimize potential errors and keep the help desk from tracking customer trades. I would suggest when entering an order or before logging out for the day, to enter a GTC stop on any open positions. This way if your system has a problem the following day you are covered. This is not an ideal solution but it would work.

Sorry about the incomplete answers but wanted to get back to you over the weekend. I've got a very full schedule this week (the HK stock exchange is going to an order routing system which we are part of the initial guinney pig group) but will do my best to track down the appropriate people for more solid answers.

Amazing Jason:
21 years of age is one of the requirements to open an account. I do not know if there have been any exceptions to this rule. I was going to state that you send me a private e-mail with more information. Instead, I'll contact the head of accounts to see if this is a steadfast rule and get back to you.

 
WJ,
Confirmed that we are in the process of getting a few new quotes on additional insurance this week. Not sure what happened last time we looked into it but a different person is currently handling the matter so hopefully you'll hear something soon.

IRA's - definately on the back burner for now. Too many higher priority projects. My guess is that we will eventually offer them but for now I believe it comes down to a business decision and where to allocate programming and back office resources most efficiently.

AJ,
Exceptions to account openings requirements would have to be made on a case by case basis. I'm afraid that not many have been granted. However, I'm talking to the head of accounts in the states and if there is a possibility to open an account for someone under 21, I'll send you an e-mail at your posted address asking for some additional information.
 
Did any other IB users have problems with the TW system this morning? For the first half hour I couldn't trade. I couldn't get in touch with their help desk or their live help. This is really lousy service. This didn't really cost me anything, and it's pretty rare for their system to have problems like this, but I would like to think I could get in touch with someone when something like this does happen.
 
mjt:

I was in the #interactivebrokers Chatroom on Othernet and traders there were also complaining about problems placing orders and no IB reps answering phones. Seems they had a major system problem on the quotes/order servers.
My TWS could place limit orders on ISLD and ARCA outside the market without problem, but never executed any trade because it could be dangerous in such situations. These kind of IB problems are starting to be annoying and soon traders will start to flee from their service. My opinion is that their commission is low for a reason, and this is one of the reasons. As I am writing this the problem is still present at the chatroom and several other traders were trying to get in contact with an IB rep but phone seems to ring forever they say.

mjt, I recommend you to join us in the chatroom (it's free) , this way you can be told in advance when problems arise and this way keep you out of troubles

hsanson
 
hsanson,
I hope you would understand that when there is a system wide problem, thousands of calls are hitting the help desk at once and thus it is impossible to handle all of them. I would imagine any other large automated brokerage would have similar problems on their help desks under these circumstances. There is a bulletin page on the TWS which may be of help. However, I agree that we must come up with a better way to inform our clients when there are problems and assume we will be tackling this issue.
 
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