Opinions on Interactive Brokers?

spindr0 · Dec 1, 2017

eastern_warrior said:
Besides, you should all be on tiered pricing if doing any size as you could get rebates (negative commissions) on exchanges that pay for providing liquidity or have your per share fees drop to lower than .0035 per share.

The only time I qualified for tiered pricing size was in 2008-2009 when it was like shooting fish in a barrel. So at this point in time, I'm stuck with the .005 per share. However, that rate still entitles me to liquidity rebates and occasionally, I get paid to make the trade (negative commission).

Or am I mistaken and tiered is available regardless of volume per month?

ET180 · Dec 1, 2017

I'm pretty sure that tiered is available regardless of volume per month. I never saw any restrictions on it and I'm not a day trader.

sprstpd · Dec 1, 2017

spindr0 said:
Or am I mistaken and tiered is available regardless of volume per month?

You choose which one you want, fixed or tiered:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1590

You might be able to just look at the examples to see which category is better for you. It was not obvious to me which was better for my style of trading so I wrote a program to analyze past trades. Tiered won out even though I don't do a lot of volume.

spindr0 · Dec 1, 2017

Thanks for the info ET180 and sprstpd. I'll look into it.

murray t turtle · Dec 1, 2017

Xela said:
I traded at IB for years (until 2016 - but never stocks).

I think I can sum up my collective experiences there in one sentence, really (which is actually pretty unusual, from a mouthy chick like me): my dealing costs were undoubtedly a little lower than they would have been anywhere else, but my customer service experiences were both very variable and overall probably a little worse than they would have been anywhere else.

%%
Sounds like you had an advantage as a female trader; the few times i tried to call, i finally hung up + later in day they had it fixed. I noticed volume on IB charts was way off, but overall excellant. I would have to agree with the magazine IB ad , in the multitude of yellow cabs, IB founder said ''never chose an an ordinary investment vehicle'' he was riding a horse.NOT sarcasm + no spell check used

d08 · Dec 1, 2017

Robert Morse said:
d08,

I'm not following your issue with these fees, These are regulatory fees charged to the account holder for transactions. Why would you think it is fair for a business providing a service to you to pay for your fees?

My issue is that they used to be part of commissions. They were separated but the advertisements continued with the "$0.005 per 100" selling point. Unless the transaction fees only started a few years ago, it's a very sneaky move.

d08 · Dec 1, 2017

spindr0 said:
The only time I qualified for tiered pricing size was in 2008-2009 when it was like shooting fish in a barrel. So at this point in time, I'm stuck with the .005 per share. However, that rate still entitles me to liquidity rebates and occasionally, I get paid to make the trade (negative commission).

Or am I mistaken and tiered is available regardless of volume per month?

Tiered is available for everyone but if you do less than 300k volume and a lot of market orders, you'll end up paying more compared to fixed.

ET180 · Dec 2, 2017

d08 said:
Tiered is available for everyone but if you do less than 300k volume and a lot of market orders, you'll end up paying more compared to fixed.

Makes sense, I never do market orders on stock. I'll always put my order in somewhere in the bid ask spread.

maxinger · Dec 2, 2017

I think the only thing good is its wide range of financial instruments, and low commission.

I hate its color selection and its antique, unattractive display.
The english they use is rather strange, un-straight forward, odd.
Wonder who are those IB staff. Perhaps they have great command of english and we don't have

d08 · Dec 2, 2017

maxinger said:
I think the only thing good is its wide range of financial instruments, and low commission.

I hate its color selection and its antique, unattractive display.
The english they use is rather strange, un-straight forward, odd.
Wonder who are those IB staff. Perhaps they have great command of english and we don't have

Their English is perfectly fine for me. You're forgetting that their job is also to protect the company of lawsuits and Americans are generally lawsuit-happy. I wouldn't be happy if they talked like some random guy off the street.