Quote from jeb9999:
You need to read the IBKR financial reports. IBKR has two businesses: market making and brokerage.
The market making business has fluctuating results and hence a negative influence on the stock price.
The brokerage business is doing very well. Pretax profit margin was 49% in 2009 up from 44% in 2008. Total accounts were 134K in 2009 up 21% from 111K in 2008. Customer equity was $15.2 billion in 2009 up 71% from $8.9 billion in 2008.
Please list all the other brokerage firms with numbers like that.
Quote from spd:
That said, is IBKR something you would want to own for the long term? Ive been thinking about adding IBKR and a couple exchanges to my long term portfolio (NYX and ICE specifically), thats why I ask, and picking long term plays is not something Im particularly good at right now.
Quote from vhehn:
i think ib has limited growth potential. they only take experienced traders,dont pay interest, and their monthly fees are too high for mom and pop investor.
while that is good for us traders that use ib there is a limited pool of traders that can use their service.