Most start with big firms because they have an advertising budget and a marketing team bigger than many small corp. But, then traders get specific about data, margins, APIs, latency and do move to other
FCMs.
OK, I'll take the bait Matt and "defend" ourselves. Most? really, I'd argue as accounts grow larger they want a firm that is financially strong, provides the ability to trade a larger and global asset class and care about specific items such as interest and do move to IBKR.
Numbers speak for themselves. CFTC report as/of June (and this is just CFTC segment reporting)
Interactive Brokers LLC Adjusted Net Capital - $5.4 Billion, Customer Segregated Assets - $3.9 Billion.
I'm not here to get into a tit for tat, I'm not interested in shilling for accounts every time another brokers name comes up and I am honestly too busy to spend much time servicing a message board given my day to day responsibilities.
I will agree traders do move from firm to firm at times but the numbers and growth don't lie. We (and any broker IMO) can't be all things to all people. IMO we put out a great product which will continue to evolve and improve and are second to none in many facets of the business.
So back to the original question: While we can extend resources and reply to every post and defend against comments (some legit, many not), I don't think that is the most productive use of valuable time. We definitely respect all clients regardless of experience and go out of our way to put out product giving our clients the best opportunities to make money. A few others at IBKR are going to try to take some time to post but our aim is not to make this message board a service center. However, now that we're back advertising here (you can't post as a firm if you don't advertise), we'll probably be more active but for certain within reason.