Why isn't IB up here defending themselves?

Collagen said:
Hopefully They will issue IB debit card for non US citizens soon. I doubt that would be the case tough. Luckily I can use TW debit card which is not a prepaid debit card.
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The reason I chose Revolut instead of Transferwise is this:
"Incompatible Accounts & Currencies

When you send money to TransferWise, there are a few types of bank accounts that we can't receive from, because they don't include your name as the sender.

These include, but are not limited to:

Brokerage accounts*
...

*We can receive money from USD brokerage accounts, but only if the money is sent from an account in your name. We might ask for a document to back up account ownership."
https://transferwise.com/help/11/getting-started/2932118/incompatible-accounts-currencies

If you want to spend money in a different currency than USD, you have to convert from USD to that currency. Transferwise claims they are 8 times cheaper than the average bank in doing this. However, they are still more expensive compared to doing the conversion yourself in your Interactive Brokers account.

As you can see, Transferwise claims the problem is that brokers generally do not include your name as the sender. However, Interactive Brokers does include your name as the sender. I suspect the real issue is that in a brokerage account at for instance Interactive Brokers you can do the currency exchange yourself, which means Transferwise will not make money doing the exchange.

Have you (or anyone else) been able to wire funds in another currency than USD from Interactive Brokers to Transwise?
 
What I like particularly about Interactive Brokers is that they treat their customers fair across the board:

- fair interest paid on idle cash balances
- fair interest charged on margin loans
- fair interest paid to you on short sale proceeds cash balances
- direct market access instead of selling orders
- share the stock lending proceeds with customers
- Insured Bank Deposit Sweep Program to secure customer funds
- competitive commission rates
- customers can exchange currencies themselves instead of being screwed over by bad exchange rates the broker has fixed
- free wires
- etc.

It leaves me with the impression that IB want their customers to do well and that it is important for IB’s own long-term success.

Compare that with for instance TradeZero. The zero commission is tempting. Everyone at this forum knows that there is no such thing as free and that TradeZero of course makes a living selling order flow. Fair enough, they could still be of interest.

However, many retail clients do not understand it. The business model of zero commission brokers in other words is to make money on retail clients that do not understand how the brokerage industry works. That leaves you with a feeling that their business model is not aligned with the interest of their customers to do well in the long term.

How is that reflected. Well, you see that reflected in the fine print of what they do. Let’s get back to TradeZero. They charge 7x market rate cost for 1st night of borrowing stocks. To me that smells like a broker that wants to lure clients by offering zero commission trades but in reality, leave them worse off by selling their orders and charging 7x market rate for borrowing shares. The latter alone will for many traders cost more than what they pay in commission at IB.

It is put down in writing, so it is perfectly ok. But it makes me distrust that these brokers have my best interest aligned with their own long-term success. And since you cannot measure every aspect of the business, it is important to gain that trust and a general feeling that the broker you use have your best interest aligned with their own.
 
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Maverick2608 said:
The reason I chose Revolut instead of Transferwise is this:
"Incompatible Accounts & Currencies

When you send money to TransferWise, there are a few types of bank accounts that we can't receive from, because they don't include your name as the sender.

These include, but are not limited to:

Brokerage accounts*
...

*We can receive money from USD brokerage accounts, but only if the money is sent from an account in your name. We might ask for a document to back up account ownership."
https://transferwise.com/help/11/getting-started/2932118/incompatible-accounts-currencies

If you want to spend money in a different currency than USD, you have to convert from USD to that currency. Transferwise claims they are 8 times cheaper than the average bank in doing this. However, they are still more expensive compared to doing the conversion yourself in your Interactive Brokers account.

As you can see, Transferwise claims the problem is that brokers generally do not include your name as the sender. However, Interactive Brokers does include your name as the sender. I suspect the real issue is that in a brokerage account at for instance Interactive Brokers you can do the currency exchange yourself, which means Transferwise will not make money doing the exchange.

Have you (or anyone else) been able to wire funds in another currency than USD from Interactive Brokers to Transwise?
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What You mentioned is right. I have transferred to TW USD from IB before Jan 2019 before they issued the rule to add a code on your transfer which can't be done with IB. But we can transfer from IB to Revolut in Euro. Then convert for free Eur to USD at Revolut. And even transfer to TW for free. Revolut can also issue virtual cards through their app which are useful and more secure to buy online. The bad thing is that I do not believe US residents can apply yet.

The cases where TW is more useful are:

- debit card not prepaid. useful for rent a car etc..
- no week end additional fee for currency exchange
- no additional fee for exotic currencies exchange such as THB RUB and few others.
 
def said:
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.
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Hey def, good to hear from you again and glad you're still with IB.

For newbies, def has been on ET a very long time and back in the day, ie 15-20 years ago, more or less functioned as the IB liaison and help desk for ET members, even though he was in HK. Truly one of the good guys here.

IB is not for you if you want $500 day trade margin on ES or zero stock commish. What they do offer is responsible management that protects customer accounts from the sort of blowups that took down several FCMs, plus an amazingly broad range of things you can trade. They offer attractive rates on cash balances. TWS is probably not perfect for rapid fire stock day trading, but it is excellent for futures. The charting is 100 times better than it used to be, and frankly, I can't see why most people would need to pay for a charting package now.
 
AAAintheBeltway said:
Hey def, good to hear from you again and glad you're still with IB.

For newbies, def has been on ET a very long time and back in the day, ie 15-20 years ago, more or less functioned as the IB liaison and help desk for ET members, even though he was in HK. Truly one of the good guys here.

IB is not for you if you want $500 day trade margin on ES or zero stock commish. What they do offer is responsible management that protects customer accounts from the sort of blowups that took down several FCMs, plus an amazingly broad range of things you can trade. They offer attractive rates on cash balances. TWS is probably not perfect for rapid fire stock day trading, but it is excellent for futures. The charting is 100 times better than it used to be, and frankly, I can't see why most people would need to pay for a charting package now.
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I'm curious what makes you say it's good for futures but not "rapid fire stock trading".... The issues withttws that effect the equities side effect the futures side no?
 
El_Cubano said:
I'm curious what makes you say it's good for futures but not "rapid fire stock trading".... The issues withttws that effect the equities side effect the futures side no?
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What issues are you having?

The reason I said that for stock trading is I find setting up an order for stocks to be a bit cumbersome. I suppose I could set up hot keys and it would be ok. I don't know if it is possible to set up a default hot key order with size, display amount, route etc. I never used IB for daytrading stocks so I never tried it. With lightspeed for example, I had hotkeys that generated the full order and you just had to hit send. As I recall you could transmit it just by hitting the hotkey, if you wanted.
 
AAAintheBeltway said:
What issues are you having?

The reason I said that for stock trading is I find setting up an order for stocks to be a bit cumbersome. I suppose I could set up hot keys and it would be ok. I don't know if it is possible to set up a default hot key order with size, display amount, route etc. I never used IB for daytrading stocks so I never tried it. With lightspeed for example, I had hotkeys that generated the full order and you just had to hit send. As I recall you could transmit it just by hitting the hotkey, if you wanted.
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Ok... If you didn't already know that TWS was capable of the things you just mentioned then don't think you'd know about or be able to help my issues.

But to your other point yes... TWS's order entry is very cumbersome and slow. But I use hot keys for everything. But there are still some orders and setups that require manual entry and its painful to do so.
 
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