IB (finally?) admits to matching orders internally

[Sig]

After reading all your posts, my advice would be to find a broker that suits your needs and are happy with or at least are less unhappy with.
No matter you are right or wrong, your feeling is very important and trading is very hectic and you should not add the frustration with your broker to it.

I think he, like a lot of us, invested a lot into writing code for IB's API that would be costly in terms of time to refactor to another broker. I bit the bullet and left, but I'll be damned if I let IB trap another guy like me in the same way. If I'd read up on them here before I chose them I probably never would have. It's a public service to let people know how they run their business, hopefully we can spare a few new traders some pain down the road. The sad part is that for the most part they could make some minor changes and make their company so much better. They just don't give a damn about the customer and essentially tell you to go f*(K yourself when you point out areas they could improve. And bizarrely their customers on ET often respond the same way, must be some version of the Stockholm Syndrome.

 

[truetype]

I think he, like a lot of us, invested a lot into writing code for IB's API that would be costly in terms of time to refactor to another broker

It's called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

 

[d08]

After reading all your posts, my advice would be to find a broker that suits your needs and are happy with or at least are less unhappy with.
No matter you are right or wrong, your feeling is very important and trading is very hectic and you should not add the frustration with your broker to it.

As Sig pointed out, I'm very attached to their API by now. This is why I would much rather they listen to customers and implement some improvements. I'm not suggesting anything too dramatic but in the last years commissions have slightly increased, margin requirements for most equities have gone up and IB internal technical problems are more common. We could do with some improvements in the service quality or lower pricing.

 

[Shadetree42]

IB does have better margin rates than anyone. There are plenty of brokers who can meet or beat their commissions, see Bob's comment above. The rest are pretty subjective and I don't know what you're referring to with "free algos", an API? You may very well be someone with a combination of needs that only IB can fill. If so I'm a bit sad for you that you're stuck with the downsides of IB, but I'm not going to attack you with the religious zeal and vitriol shown by a number of people on this thread. That's my primary point, pick IB or don't pick IB, just don't feel the need to personally attack someone who lists a legitimate shortcoming or fabricate "facts" (not saying you did, referring to earlier posts). A secondary point is that many of us found we didn't need the combination only IB can provide and when we stopped and thought about it we realized there were better options for our particular trading that allowed us to avoid the many significant downsides we experienced with IB. If that's not you, by all means stay with IB. Just food for thought.

So your short answer is no, no single broker can match the five basic criteria I mentioned. (If you don't what an algo is, you are definitely correct that we do not share the same needs).

 

[Shadetree42]

Yes, our retail rates are 7.5% down to 5%. I can do much better for institutional customers. The retail accounts that borrow have more risk and deserve a higher rate. They are more apt to go below $0.00 from trading small cap stocks and highly concentrated portfolios. Institutional accounts are more apt to hedge or be long/short and have less risk.

True. Yet for some reason people seem baffled that IB implements an auto-liquidation program to prevent the very risk you describe.

 

[Robert Morse]

True. Yet for some reason people seem baffled that IB implements an auto-liquidation program to prevent the very risk you describe.

IMO, IB automates their risk to keep cost down. They can't staff themselves to do it manually. That manual process can protect the client in cases of errors in their system.

 

[Shadetree42]

Right. They are offering a great margin rate in exchange for the client accepting automated risk control. That's an excellent trade-off for me and many other traders. For others, it may not be worth it.

 

[Robert Morse]

Right. They are offering a great margin rate in exchange for the client accepting automated risk control. That's an excellent trade-off for me and many other traders. For others, it may not be worth it.

BTW, in addition to our relationship with Wedbush securities, we are also introducing brokers to IB and I have a number of LVX accounts there.

 

[Sig]

So your short answer is no, no single broker can match the five basic criteria I mentioned. (If you don't what an algo is, you are definitely correct that we do not share the same needs).

I grasp what an algorithm is. I used IBs API pretty extensively, it actually locked me in and is the only reason I stayed as long as I did because I didn't want to refactor my code for a different API. Most of us who write our own code would call what IB offers an API, or application program interface. The algorithm, or algo, is what we write ourselves to implement our trading logic. I wasn't sure if you were mistakenly calling the API an algorithm, or if there is some other feature they added since I left that allows you to use algorithms they wrote to execute their trading logic for you. If it's the latter I can think of few things scarier than trusting IB staff to come up with trading logic as logic itself seems to generally be a foreign concept to them!

 

[viruscore1]

When using IB or any broker, verify quotes on another platform...