First, compliments to def for always trying to solve troubles and answering people's quesitons. def is probably the most helpful and patient IB employee out there, it is hard to deal with anybody else at IB on such an intelligent and civilized basis, that is if you ever get to talk to anybody there, anyway. Thank you, def.
Other than that, IB, once upon a time, was the broker of choice for the retail trader, because regardless of lack of service and the like (due to full automation), they were known to be very stable, and particularly offering the lowest rates of all out there.
Today, the wind has changed a little. IB is far from stable, I have had several disconnections this week, and my line is not unreliable. I have a tracerouter that visually pings and traces the route to IB's server (in my case gw4.ibllc.com), and the host was fully unreachable several times in a row. One day this week, I got disconnected several times in a row, for several minutes, and upon verification with a trading friend on the other end of the world (UK), I figured that that friend had exactly the same problems, just saying "appalling".
Fine for the occassional trader, who uses large server-based stops for protection and trades small size, but certainly not the kind of reliability any professional futures or, god beware, equities trader could even remotely accept.
That is reliability. Score = Low. Shame it's come to that stage.
Now comes the rates: Well, that's a shame, isn't it? Time ago, I went with IB for they had the lowest rates. Now they're hardly better than poor. $4.50 /RT retail for futures still, while other brokers out there are offering <$3.50, some $3.30 and less with volume. Where's your competitive edge gone? Any flexibility?
I think IB should stop defending themselves, shut up and put some money into serious upgrading of server reliability, redundancy and updating of trading rates.
This is well-meant and very sincere. If they don't, they will get the bill sooner or later. Traders are very impatient fellows. They only have to lose a couple of K or opportunities a few times and they'll run away and get the next best deal. After all, there's plenty out there now. And once a bad experience with a broker sticks, they'll never go back. That's a client lost for lifetime. To top it all off you get some bad propaganda, too. And never underestimate the impact of propaganda in a word-of-mouth community like that of trader's.
As for myself, I have had enough and will only use IB for "emergency hedging" now. I will probably be closing out my now already rarely used IB accounts completely soon, to go to safer shores, with much lower rates, better platforms and much higher reliability.
IB management, think about what it is you want. If you don't take your future into your own hands - we'll take it into ours.
Sincerely,
Scientist.
