IB (finally?) admits to matching orders internally

This defense of IB and personal attacks on the OP are almost religious in their zeal! You've got Humble Investor entirely fabricating not just a "fact" but an entire story about the pious IB who fought a brave battle against their shareholders (Here's a quote from one of their own filings "Interactive Brokers receives direct payment for order flow from certain market centers for marketable orders" https://www.interactivebrokers.com/download/1Q_2013_IB_ORDER_ROUTING_REPORT.pdf Took all of 5 seconds on Google to find that.)
You've got hajimow launching into repeated completely unjustified ad hominem personal attacks on the OP when he couldn't address the actual issue the OP brought up.
You've got bln giving us a self-rightous lesson on morality about who deserves to get spanked. Have you ever been auto-liquidated because IB was too lazy to program their algorithm to realize the max amount a vertical spread could lose bln? There's plenty of threads about autoliquidations that were completely unjustified by any risk metric, this isn't about risk.
What is it about IB that you all get so defensive to the point of becoming jerks when anyone dares to criticize it?
 
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Sig said:
If IB shopped your order to all the dark pools you may very well have been filled at .35. You'll never know, because they never showed your order. To be honest, you can be unhappy with behavior that provides suboptimal fills for customers no matter how you're doing in the market. Most of us would in fact consider that an immenently reasonable thing to do. If you were managing my money I'd say it was even your fiduciary duty to do so. Not sure why the ad hominem attack on the OP for daring to question the great and mighty IB, completely unjustifiable.
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If you wanted to get filled at .35, why wouldn't you put your limit at .35? And if IB "shops" your order around, before filling at .37, you have the distinct possibility of algo-bots detecting this and moving the market away from you so you get no fill at all.
 
sprstpd said:
If you wanted to get filled at .35, why wouldn't you put your limit at .35? And if IB "shops" your order around, before filling at .37, you have the distinct possibility of algo-bots detecting this and moving the market away from you so you get no fill at all.
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I guess we just have a different view of the world. In my world I expect my broker to maximize value for me on fills. If I put an order in at .37 but it's possible to get a better price I'd like to expect that to happen. If IB is doing something that benefits themselves to their customer's detriment, they deserve to be called on it. It's certainly possible that bots could move the market away from me, but in my world I want to be the one who calculates the risk of that and makes my decision accordingly of where and how to shop my order, not IB.
In your world you apparently you have authority figures you don't question and IB has somehow risen to that level. A customer should apparently just be happy that they have the privilege of being a customer of the great and benevolent IB, who always knows what's best for you. It's just a difference in philosophy I guess.
 
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Sig said:
This defense of IB and personal attacks on the OP are almost religious in their zeal!
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I think you're missing the point friend. I'm no cheerleader for them, but there is no broker on the retail side who can compete with their commission structure and provide the same capability in regards to order routing and back end structure. You have ZERO options.
 
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digitalnomad said:
I think you're missing the point friend. I'm no cheerleader for them, but there is no broker on the retail side who can compete with their commission structure and provide the the same capability in regards to order routing and back end structure. You have ZERO options.
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This post is rational, you admit IB has issues but they're the only game in town. Fair enough, you didn't feel the need to personally attack anyone who dared criticize them or make shit up about how great they are. That behavior is the baffling part I'm questioning.

I will note that I once thought as you did, then I took the time to do some research and found that's just not true. For a tiny subset of people who need to be able to simultaneously trade Mongolian treasury bonds, Australian iron ore futures, and options on South African gold mines in an account of less than $25,000 that may be the case. For anyone else if you look at the products you actually trade you can find several options that beat IB on all the counts you mentioned, but the right broker is going to be different depending how and what you trade. I think a lot of people needlessly put up with IB's crap for the availability of a wide range of products that in reality they'll never avail themselves of.
 
I forgot to mention that I only trade US equities through them. I can't offer my opinion on other products, but my equity orders get filled within my system parameters, and at portfolio level, nearly simultaneously.

I've never had any margin or auto-liquidation issues with them, but I generally don't exceed 3:1 intraday BP. I won't fix what's not broken, but am always open to evaluate options.
 
Sig said:
I guess we just have a different view of the world. In my world I expect my broker to maximize value for me on fills. If I put an order in at .37 but it's possible to get a better price I'd like to expect that to happen. If IB is doing something that benefits themselves to their customer's detriment, they deserve to be called on it. It's certainly possible that bots could move the market away from me, but in my world I want to be the one who calculates the risk of that and makes my decision accordingly of where and how to shop my order, not IB.
In your world you apparently you have authority figures you don't question and IB has somehow risen to that level. A customer should apparently just be happy that they have the privilege of being a customer of the great and benevolent IB, who always knows what's best for you. It's just a difference in philosophy I guess.
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Thanks for your feedback. When I joined IB at 2004 after I did a great research on brokers, when I told my friends that my broker is IB they laughed. They said Interactive what? They said why not Fidelity? Why not Ameritrade? Why not Etrade? I told them I have tried all of them and they all suck for my trading style. IB is not for everyone. If you have only $5000 and do 4 trades a month, you would hate IB. After I joined IB, I have always kept my eyes open to find another better broker and you know the answer, there were NONE !!. I got many calls from brokers to invite me to take my business to them and they had conditions like I have to promise to trade 10000 trades a day, I have to promise to trade options in more than 10 contracts and yada yada yada. I do not want any rules. I want to be able to trade 10000000000 times a day and they next week nothing. I do not want to talk to customer support. I do not want paper confirmation on anything. Not even on tax forms. IB just does that. Just find a broker which charges 0.000000000001% less interest than IB or pays interest on your cash from selling naked stocks. I have many friends who trade but I do not recommend IB to them. It is like offering VODKA to a kid .
 
I used to have another account with Fidelity. It happened many times that I put an order to sell an option at say 0.3 at 10AM and then after 30 min I put the same order in IB for the same price, After 10 min, my order at IB was filled while my order at Fidelity was still open. Well explain it to me. I am all ears.
I do not care how IB got that filled. In dark pool? In dungeons? Through Chicago gangs? Used fairies? who cares. I wanted to sell it at 0.3 and it go filled and I was paid for that order instead of paying them. Find another broker for me who does that. Please, please, I am begging you.
 
I traded 3000 shares of GOOG on Friday. At the end, ended up with zero shares. I traded it in the quantities of 100 shares so it was many orders back and forth. I paid $2.33 commission for the whole about 30 trades. I made $658 totally and IB made $2.33. If you find a broker that would charge $2.32, I would switch.

The closest one would be $4.99x30 plus sec fee which would be over $150.
 
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