Interactive Brokers Spread/Pricing

A

Algo_Design_Kid

Took a quick look around their website but could not find anything. I was specifically looking for information on the pair GBP/AUD and what spread/pricing was available from anyone that knows. Minimum lot size as well.

I guess anyone who has any input positive/negative about their FX would be a welcome addition.

Thx
 
IB has just increased their minimum lot sizes. I think for GBP it is 20.000, but that is a guess.

Since it's a weekend I'll provide a guesstimate on GBP/AUD and then someone more knowledgable can elaborate further. I'd say around 6-8 pips wide.

IB unfortunately has seen more and more pulling of quotes if you try to execute on them - it's not as good as it used to be.
 
Just to be clear, when I referred to pulling of quotes it is of course the bank quotes that are pulled by the bank on the inside and not IB's doing. But this area has significantly worsened over the last 12-18 months, it was very rare before and now happens pretty often. It's as if IB has given all their quote providers a last look feature, which must have been unavailable in the past.
 
Quote from BigSalad:

IB has just increased their minimum lot sizes. I think for GBP it is 20.000, but that is a guess.

Since it's a weekend I'll provide a guesstimate on GBP/AUD and then someone more knowledgable can elaborate further. I'd say around 6-8 pips wide.

IB unfortunately has seen more and more pulling of quotes if you try to execute on them - it's not as good as it used to be.
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When you say 6-8 points wide then you have the next poster saying they have the $2.50 commission.. is it both? Or how does that all work?

It's unfortunately down to only IB and OEC for my since the program I use for autotrading (Sierra) only connects with either one of those. The program I have developed in theory is quite a percentage gainer and to implement this into "reality" I need every damn pip I can get since it is med-high freq. Appreciate the help.
 
Why not just trade currency futures?

If you only have $100 and just want to gamble on nano-lots, that's cool. But for real capital, I would choose a regulated futures market.
 
Yes, it's both. You pay the commissions (which is 0.2 pips per side until you reach volume thresholds) and then the spread is the prices quoted which effectively is the cost of a roundtrip with market orders.
 
Quote from BigSalad:

Yes, it's both. You pay the commissions (which is 0.2 pips per side until you reach volume thresholds) and then the spread is the prices quoted which effectively is the cost of a roundtrip with market orders.
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OK, so in my mind that doesn't make a lot of sense unless the spread (or the cost of using market orders on both sides) is really low, like around 3-4.

Because OEC (my other choice) has it listed "as low" as 4.5 and you don't have to pay any extra commissions. Not really sure what "as low" means though. So that probably means pretty much never.

I heard through someone that Interactive B. was far superior in pricing like a spread of 1.5 for this GBP AUD pair etc. That's why when you (or someone else) stated in their mind they thought around 6.5 or something that pretty much surprised me. I could have misunderstood the person I was speaking with though.
 
Quote from SomeYoungGuy:

Why not just trade currency futures?

If you only have $100 and just want to gamble on nano-lots, that's cool. But for real capital, I would choose a regulated futures market.
More...

Well here is the deal.

Basically have my data feed right now through FXCM. I didn't have access to really anything else. It trades about 8 times a day and the "take profit" if when the last price crosses a moving average.

So basically over the past 6 months of tick data tested it traded just about 1000 times. So what I need to do now is test it out with lot sizes equal to .10 each - or I guess .20 if I have to with IB. I want to start it with $1000 and get a real trackrecord with real fills.

You can see trading over an estimated 2000 times a year every pip counts, and something like GBP AUD the spread can kill you.

So in reality I really need to get either OEC or IB data feed for past 6 months of tick data and then once again test the model on that. What is holding me back from bringing this to another broker is that Sierra will only autotrade with IB and OEC.

If I can get the fills I need it has the potential to yield about 7.x% per month with an average maximum open drawdown per trade of less than .5%. So starting with $1000 it tested out to be just around $1500 after 6 months or so.

So I really need to find out in reality what this program can yield on a small scale and if I can repeat the last months results with the same sample of trading size then I will have quite a bit of private capital coming my way. But this is all "hypothetical" until I can get real world results.
 
Are y'all saying that banks on the IB ecn don't have to honor their posted bid/offer if you hit it with a marketable limit order? Or is someone else just hitting it before you?
 
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