please provide facts to support the above statement.
IBKR
- Thread starter SoesWasBetter
- Start date
take a look at the capital position of other brokers. check their fixed costs. your reply is so far off the mark as to be.....
If another broker links up with a big market maker they can take advantage of their global connectivity and have a lower cost base. Capital-wise, sure IB has a very good capital position... and some clients will definitely look at that... especially the bigger ones. But nothing that can't be raised....
I don't see it as a monopoly... there are plenty of other large brokerages... what's IB's market share? My guess it's nowhere near something one would call a monopoly share.... but I'm happy to be proven wrong mate.
Not true. Robinhood provides free commission for their customers. IBKR, however cheap their commission, cannot compete with free Robinhood, at least in terms of price. I know of many millennials recommending Robinhood as their broker for buying U.S stocks.
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It's not only about price. For many types of traders IB is far from cheap.
For me it's their services like the API which I find to be extremely useful. While other platforms have APIs too, they don't seem to be as well thought out.
Lightspeed for example seems to be focused on point-and-click traders and if you want something more, platform costs come into play.
Many also differentiate between US and international customers. Costs for international customers are often higher and they're treated as second class customers. I don't get this impression with IB and obviously this is helping their bottom line.
For me it's their services like the API which I find to be extremely useful. While other platforms have APIs too, they don't seem to be as well thought out.
Lightspeed for example seems to be focused on point-and-click traders and if you want something more, platform costs come into play.
Many also differentiate between US and international customers. Costs for international customers are often higher and they're treated as second class customers. I don't get this impression with IB and obviously this is helping their bottom line.
Different markets. IB is clearly going for the people doing more frequent trading, professionals.
Robinhood's market are people buying Snapchat on a whim. Not to mention Robinhood's services are limited to an extreme, you couldn't actively trade with them.
Yeah free commision but you are paying for it through payment for order flow and missed trades. No one can match IB's pricing, technology, depth of product offering and capital position.
As a trader, I find IB to be way way ahead of the rest of the retail (and much of the semi-pro) field of brokers. eveyone else is a far distant second or worse. That's when I bought IBKR stock, although clearly not enough.
TWS might be point and click but that's just one of their products. Their API seems to have more traction than competitors, probably helped due to the fact that it's available in most popular languages.