Is IB cheating you?

Quote from Hurricane:

If a broker did want to cheat their clients, the best way would be the calculation of interest income on cash balances or margin interest on debit balances. I've never been able to recreate those numbers.
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I completely agree. Sometimes I wonder if they spend time programming "equivocal" systems that can be interpreted one way or the other, like compunding interest per second, minute, day, business day, month, year, etc. or if they round up or down differently depending on whether it is a credit or debit.

But let's face it, if you have a $100k brokerage account and you choose to spend the necessary time to re-calculate and check the $51.27 monthly interest payment, whether it should be $51.28 instead or maybe even $51.29, then there must be something seriously wrong with your life and/or trading method.
 
My guess is he didn't account for commissions in one of his calculations, but he did in the other. IB's account window is not entirely consistent in this regard, I believe last time I checked they were including commissions in stock and option P/L but not futures P/L. But who cares? I'd rather pay an infinitesimally smaller commission or get fills a millisecond faster than have consistent accounting in my running P/L window, which is meant for entertainment purposes only anyway. As long as the statements are accurate, that's all that matters.
 
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