Fidelity Warning!

Ah yes another +ve for IB, its low commission rate. I guess just like what M. Thénadier, that shady innkeeper from Les Misérables sang "nothing comes out of nothing, everything's got a a price".

I would prefer to think our financial brokers who handle our money to be a little better than shady innkeepers but I guess I am wrong.

And to answer all of you about TWS, I am glad the platform for equity/option trading in IB's TWS works out better but the platform for trading forex in TWS, FXTrader is ABSOLUTELY horrible and almost unusable. And this is when I can log on to TWS. Many times after the 4:15 daily maintenance, I have to try again and again sometimes up to TEN times to log back onto TWS. And TWS once completely went down shortly after NFP!!! This is NFP we are talking about, one of the busiest trading time in forex and all financial instruments, and TWS went down!! No connection, no trading no thing. You get kicked out and cannot log back in. It's a good thing that my position was already closed before the TWS shutdown otherwise I cannot imagine what would be the end result.

It is true that it's not possible that a broker's platform is perfect for all instrument's trading but for where IB's platform fails short, it fails unacceptably short not just a little bit user-friendly. It's not fair for the traders who choose to trade that instrument and paid just as much commission the same as other clients to be forced everyday to deal with a platform that not only does not help them to profit but many times cause them to make losses due to its bad design.
 
luisHK said:
You forgot the number of markets available, which other retail broker offer even close to IB, except more expensive Saxo ? Also whereas the swap rates are terrible with forex (as IB don't calculate it as swap rate, but just add/reduce the forex position to one's account balance) the margin rates are several times lower than their retail competitors.
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And so what the number of markets available? This is our MONEY that we are talking about, is it fair for us to deal with a Jack (and sometimes not even a Jack but Joke) of all Trades but Master of none?
 
Llxa said:
And so what the number of markets available?
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uh ?!? I trade several markets, if i need to use a different broker for each market, or say continent, it's far less interesting than keeping those funds under a single roof, plus with portfolio margin, so I can easily switch the markets I invest most heavily in.
As of issues with the Platform, the only serious one so far has been during the chf debacle -when I was long a bunch of eurchf futures- lost easily 150k more than should have been if the first orders hadn't been rejected because of their price cap in fast moving markets before the Platform froze.
But the way i see it, the only step up from IB for someone trading international markets is going institutional, and whereas I knocked on Newedge and AbnAmro door and actually qualify for the accounts limit at Newedge at least, they showed very little interest in independant traders.
I'm still open to brokers recommendations though.
I don't trade spot forex though, IB seems indeed very uncompetitive for those holding overnight forex positions, but again if you trade equities using a lot of margin (including shorts positions), the low margin rates with IB will save you a (very) significant amount compared to other retail broker.
 
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luisHK said:
uh ?!? I trade several markets, if i need to use a different broker for each market, or say continent, it's far less interesting than keeping those funds under a single roof, plus with portfolio margin, so I can easily switch the markets I invest most heavily in.
As of issues with the Platform, the only serious one so far has been during the chf debacle -when I was long a bunch of eurchf futures- lost easily 150k more than should have been if the first orders hadn't been rejected because of their price cap in fast moving markets before the Platform froze.
But the way i see it, the only step up from IB for someone trading international markets is going institutional, and whereas I knocked on Newedge and AbnAmro door and actually qualify for the accounts limit at Newedge at least, they showed very little interest in independant traders.
I'm still open to brokers recommendations though.
I don't trade spot forex though, IB seems indeed very uncompetitive for those holding overnight forex positions, but again if you trade equities using a lot of margin (including shorts positions), the low margin rates with IB will save you a (very) significant amount compared to other retail broker.
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Well for every single instrument, there is ALWAYS a broker that is more competitive and is a "step-up" to IB with better platform, better service and/or cheaper commission and cost. Like I said before, IB REALLY is a "jack(joke) of all trades but master of none" type of broker. Yes it offers trading platforms/services for a variety of instruments but each of the platform is just so-so or crappy depending on the platform and because of economies of scale, it's able to offer lower commission but compensate for it in somewhere like uncompetitive swap rates on overnight positions, account inactive fees and withdraw fees if you initiated more than 1 withdraw per month.

So I guess all it comes down to is your trading operation. If your trading operation encompasses trading on variety of instruments across many markets and you want the convenience of everything "under one roof" but not too particular about technical requirement and at the same time not incurring large costs when trading then yes IB would suit you fine. But if you would like to concentrate on one or two particular instruments in specific markets with technical trading then you would need brokers that specialize more in these markets with lower commission/cost and offer you more sophisticated and more technically robust platforms at least a platform that doesn't shut down during NFP for a start.
 
"I later found out it's because IB is trying to sync the spot forex with the trading of the kiwi futures and somehow the kiwi futures has a trading halt from 3:00 to 3:15 pm something like that. WHY?"

That question I can answer. They must have their risk and margin tied to the future. If the future is not trading, they have no values to monitor.
 
Llxa said:
For the longest time, all you have is a clumsy, clunky and completely inaccurate charts that plots midpoints of price. Who, in this day 'n' age plots "midpoints" on a chart for trading?? IB's new charting software from MultiCharts is an improvement but still it still has a long learning curve and many of the indicators are still either missing or not properly programmed. And if you want to use MultiCharts to trade, you have to pay each month.

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midpoint is the default. You can pick trades or from a list of about 10 different things. The proof is attached. I have used multi charts in IB and it works perfect.
In conclusion I can say maybe TWS is like a Ferrari that you if you are used to drive a Ford Tempo, you will crash the car to the first post in 10 seconds :)
 

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hajimow said:
midpoint is the default. You can pick trades or from a list of about 10 different things. The proof is attached. I have used multi charts in IB and it works perfect.
In conclusion I can say maybe TWS is like a Ferrari that you if you are used to drive a Ford Tempo, you will crash the car to the first post in 10 seconds :)
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LOL I am glad you enjoy using TWS that's designed in outdated Java. No, TWS is at best a Ford without power steering. If you can get used it, great it will take you to places you want to go but the driving process is anything but desired and is downright painful. If you can't get used to it, well then you crash. That, I think is a more appropriate analogy. :)
 
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rmorse said:
"I later found out it's because IB is trying to sync the spot forex with the trading of the kiwi futures and somehow the kiwi futures has a trading halt from 3:00 to 3:15 pm something like that. WHY?"

That question I can answer. They must have their risk and margin tied to the future. If the future is not trading, they have no values to monitor.
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That is dumb!! Every single futures market has daily maintenance period at different times so what you shut down trading of Spot FX for every single of them? Like I said, NO brokers in the Forex industry except IB ever does this kind of intraday trading halt for a currency and they monitor risks and margins just fine. And from a correlation point of view, it's the Spot value that's supposed to be leading the Futures, not the other way around. Spot value of the currency is the base value of the currency; it's what's the currency worth. The Futures value is a derivative value, a value derived from the Spot. How can you base your valuation of an instrument and everything tied to it on values that's derived from the instrument that you are trying to value? Blind leading the blind here? And the valuation really comes from trading; it's through the acts of buying and selling, the constant negotiations between buyers and sellers that a value of the currency is seen. If you shut down the trading of the currency, WHERE and HOW are you going to get the value from? Stupid!!

And not to mention the incredible risk exposure and inconvenience for the traders who already have positions open and/or trying to take positions. I have lost so many lucrative trading opportunities and lost so much money in kiwi during this "trading halt" because I couldn't close open positions or open new ones based from my setup.
 
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Just to wrap up the Fidelity part of this thread: I closed out all of my positions a couple of weeks back and then tried to move my money out and close the account. That seemingly-simple request took them over a full week to do and only happened after several phone calls from me, which I consider to be exceptionally poor customer service. (For contrast, my futures broker moves my money out to my bank account overnight every time.)

And so I repeat my initial suggestion - get the heck away from Fidelity if you want to retain control over your money. There are many more pleasant brokers out there that may appreciate your business and not treat you like a nuisance.
 
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