Cheap Broker

Opra · May 24, 2006

Quote from ids:

If you do not pay $30 a month in commissions, we will charge you $10. Find somebody else if it is unacceptable. The market data subscriptions are totally optional. You can trade without a subscription and basic US data are free.

Does it mean that if I do Not subscribe to any market data, IB will not charge $10 even if my account is inactive for the month, let's say?

pacifictrader · May 24, 2006

Quote from ids:

OK, it is not free if you are pro. Do not subscribe then. You still can execute orders.

Also,

If I have around 30k in the account, but will only use it on occasion, is there a money market or something I can keep the uninvested money in, earning interest, while not being used?

ids · May 24, 2006

We pay quite high interest rates for balances higher then $10,000. Look at
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/interest.php?ib_entity=llc#credit
You will earn something like 4.544% from $20,000.

hoodooman · May 24, 2006

Ids thanks to the reply. 4.54% is an excellent rate. Maybe I'll shift some of my cd money into IB. I have two win 98 computers that can't be upgraded, so I am told. Hate to buy another one.

jimrockford · May 24, 2006

Quote from hoodooman:

Ids thanks to the reply. 4.54% is an excellent rate. Maybe I'll shift some of my cd money into IB. I have two win 98 computers that can't be upgraded, so I am told. Hate to buy another one.

I believe your trading losses, which will be cause by trading with the outdated and unstable windows 98, and hardware not even capable of running a 21st century operating system, will greatly exceed the cost of buying a reasonable computer.

ids · May 24, 2006

Microsoft does not support Win 98. This OS always was an abomination. Despite I would not recommend it, I know that some of our customers still use Win 98.

alanm · May 24, 2006

With all due respect for ids, and the (surprising) official answer, I believe you will have a difficult time with tech support at IB (or anywhere else for that matter) running Win98. It's a terrible, unstable, unsupportable, unsupported OS, and those guys are human.

New OS and new machines are cheap, and are far outshadowed even by what you pay for your data per year as a pro. If you have Win98 apps that can't be upgraded, continue to run them on the Win98 machines and get a new machine for trading.

hoodooman · May 24, 2006

My son is looking for a new broker and he wants to know if you can write checks on your IB account. Thanks again for all your replies.

ids · May 24, 2006

Checks are OK but it takes a long time to process. Electronic transfer is much better.

alanm · May 24, 2006

I think the question meant writing checks that clear against (i.e. withdraw from) your IB account. The answer is no. You can only withdraw by requesting a wire, ACH/EFT, or paper check, in order of speed.