Interactive BrokersInteractive Brokers LLC

Steve, FPA, 06/27/2010 ,

The best of no worlds, and the worst of some.

They offer support for Ninja trader, but that is only possible with a very old version of TWS, which dosn't work properly. Even the new version of TWS is completely terrible and very confusing. It even turns itself off each day, even if you are in the middle of a trade it turns it self off, potentially costing large amounts of money (eg if you run a robotic trading strategy).

There tick data isn't real tick data and there system sometimes goes offline during high trading periods.

They charge a commission for all Forex trades, and then they leave the cash in the foreign currency in your account at the end of the trade, they will not convert it back for you. So you have to go into the terrible TWS application and convert it back using the high spread 'Ideal' platform, with more commissions and even then it dosn't convert it all. The costs for the average trader are high.

Also you find they fill you at different prices, and charge you a seperate commision for each seperate fill and if the fills break up to less than $25,000 each, then they put it back to the high spread 'Ideal' platform.

Support is hit and miss, sometimes its barely OK, sometimes it is non existant.

I don't get how the biggest companies can be so bad yet continue operarting ... I thought competition was suppose to provide us with good products and service ?

Catherine, FPA, 06/27/2010 ,

I have IB for 3 years , first year I loss around $7000.00 money in market trading (that was OK with with them when we have been loss money") after first year i have made $4000.00 in trading profit , at the 3th year i have made $7000.00 in trading profit then they start sending me several email , asked me for provide the proof of my assess( which they have no problem before ) if i want to continued to have the trading account otherwise they will suspend my account and they will closed my account if i was not sending that information to them.

Alexey Gorin, forexrealm.com, 06/27/2010 ,

Trade with this broker for over a year and have only positive feedback about it. Very good service works to provide customer support. Collected earned money without any problems.

TD, Forexpeacearmy.com, 06/27/2010 ,

Probably amongst the worse around.
Terrible executions
Diabolicaly bad platform and software
Attrocious and utterly incompetent customer service
Terrible accounting and reporting

AW, forexrealm.com, 06/27/2010 ,

I've been with IB for more than 10 years and I have traded stocks, options, futures and forex with them. They do charge a commission on forex trades, but the spreads are ultra tight interbank spreads and their commissions are some of the lowest in the business, on all of their products. They do give lower leverage in forex than many others, but requiring more than 50 to 1 leverage is not a factor in my trading (and probably shouldn't be in most others', I'm sure).

I give only 4 stars because: YES, I know their customer service can be questionable, which I know from years ago and from other traders, but this is because IB is not interested in having to walk people through the basics or answer newbie questions. They expect their customers to have at least some experience before opening with them... you know when most people open an account and lie on their ap that they have years of "extensive" experience in trading and a $1M + net worth, and then call them up to complain about normal slippage that cost them 50 bucks... this pisses IB off, as it prob should. I haven't had to contact their customer service in over 4 years anyway.

DaveManuel.com, 10/29/2009 ,

PROS:

1. A commission structure of $0.005 cents per share with a minimum cost of $1.00 per trade is pretty hard to beat.

2. Their software. Extremely bare bones (which is a good thing), but also extremely customizable. There are many third-party software packages that can be used in conjunction with IB that will enhance your experience.

3. The Universal Account. Trading 80 worldwide markets through one single account.

4. Cheap fees. Data fees are extremely cheap at Interactive Brokers.


CONS:

1. Customer Service is just OK. The customer service at IB isn't BAD, but it isn't spectacular either. They haven't made me a "raving fan" like ThinkorSwim's customer service reps did.

2. Lack of "bells and whistles" might be off-putting to some people. If you are expecting Interactive Broker's trading package to come pre-packaged with all sorts of bells and whistles, then you should probably look elsewhere.

3. Not a fan of their margin call liquidation policy.

Overall, Interactive Brokers is highly recommended. There are some things that I don't like about them, but no broker is 100% perfect. If their customer service was a little bit better.

milliondollarjourney.com, 10/18/2009 ,

I personally use and recommend Interactive Brokers for active traders as it will save most traders a bundle of money in commissions (only $1USD/200 shares (US), $0.005 / share > 200 shares (0.05% max)). The powerful interface along with fast execution times make it an extremely competitive brokerage for traders.
This platform is not only for traders, long term investors who spend more than $120USD/year in commissions should also consider this brokerage.

C. Kowalsky, About.com, 09/19/2009 ,

Pros
Extremely low commissions.
Able to trade more than 60 global markets.
Interactive Brokers provides an abundance of education and research.
Cons
As you might expect with the lowest commission rates, their customer service is not the best.
Their trading platform is not the most advanced and charting capabilities could use an upgrade.

Bob, Goforex.net, 08/28/2009 ,

The biggest problem with Interactive Brokers is that after you close a trade, you often are stuck with foreign currency in your account (what they call non-base currency) and then you have to convert that money to your base currency.

Their customer service is horrendous. Their reps are argumentative and very obstinate. They are not able to answer questions and are all attitude.

Their accounting system is bizarre beyond belief and inaccurate. It is impossible to get tax information in a reportable fashion from them.

Their spreads are tight however.

pescador, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

I find IB the best forex broker I know, but only if one has a sufficiently capitalized account.
Their system is much more transparent than the retail forex brokers.
But for trading anything below a standard lot one is much better off with Oanda.

Apocalypto, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

I am live with them now best broker I have have used.

.5 spreads on cable tonight with lowest retail coms for ecn on a 10K deposit.

No complaints from me, never leaving EVER!

may plug into paid Ninja in future.

fxterra, 07/27/2009 ,

It's a shame that IB doesn't provide a fully functioning demo so that traders may get aquainted with TWS before an account is opened.

yonnie, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

I`m with IB and what I do notice is the following.

suppose I place my buy order at 1.4650 and when it reaches that price I see 12.1m at the bid.
12m goes and my 100,000 are left.
In come more orders, 5.1m now and those 5m get matched.

in short, the big orders always seems to be filled first.

clockwork, 07/27/2009 ,

You have to realize it's not for everyone. If you are looking to trade small trades, then the $5 round turn will kill ya. But if it's saving you 7 pips on 2 full lots in a AUD/JPY trade - that's a whole different story.

The customer service sucks ass though. I agree 150%

knightsy, 07/27/2009 ,

Out of the 3 I've traded with, I would rank them thusly:

1. IB

2. Oanda

3. FXCM (A very distant third I might add).

algoa, forexpeacearmy, 07/27/2009 ,

My experience with IB (Canada) has been poor. Money oddly was taken from the account and one could never pin down exactly why it was taken out.

I had a problem wite exchange rates between the US and Canadian dollar (I always seemed to come off second best) even though I asked for the account to be in US dollars only. And I could never fully understand how they were adjusting the exchange. They never provided a proper statement.

ILclitoride, 07/27/2009 ,

IB is one of the best.
The help desk sucks ,but the rest is 5 stars.
"according to Stocks & Commodities Magazine. next runner up is FXCM"
Can you give us a link where we can check?Where is this "according to Stocks & Commodities Magazine"?

Lee, forexpeacearmy.com, 07/27/2009 ,

I must agree with most of the negative comments I’ve read here.

It has been more than 5 years for me at IB. I’ve used their Forex frontend and had to just give up. There’s too many other better alternatives (try MB’s new MetaTrader frontend for forex).
My trading has been in stocks for the most part, and all the ills mentioned before are true.

One thing that is a MUST know for any of you who is thinking about a new account is the fact that IB has officially took a stand that they are not responsible for your (Stops, or Limit) orders. In other words, I was recently notified that they would not necessarily fill my ‘buy stop’ placed on a short position.
If you don’t use a hard stop this is fine, but if you would like to buy something and place a stop, and go play, you may be unhappy with what you find on returning. How do I know? It has indeed happen to me. The stop was not filled, but price was very much past it, and the stop was still active in the software. This and similar problems has happened many times.
So, when they warned of not honoring a stop, they meant it!

The low commissions sound great, but you’ll do better shopping elsewhere.

johnlucas, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

If customer service and a bit user friendly interface make sense to you (and they should, in my opinion) stay away from IB. As a side note: their commissions are among the lowest, but who cares when you have to convert "worthless pennies" to your base account and paying commissions on them (minimum is 2.5 USD for each conversion?).

johnedow, forexfactory, 07/27/2009 ,

IB is a good broker and you can trade anything you want there, however their platform is NOT the most user friendly and the FX side of things still really needs some work. JMHO

gusto, forexpeacearmy.com, 07/27/2009 ,

It's now 4 years that I am with IB and generally satisfied as long as I don't have to use their Helpdesk, which is not only useless but also auto-irritating : you start asking help for a minor issue and you end up hating IB if not more. Like so many customer services, they just discourage people to use it in order to keep playing cards and drink beer.
To avoid time loss and anger, I decided to mostly use their chat service : you just have to wait a few minutes (and not a full week) to realise they are not going to help you !

Frank, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

They're the best forex retail broker according to Stocks & Commodities Magazine. next runner up is FXCM.

Well if they show FXCM as #2 then I would highly question them listing IB as #1.

AJ, forexpeacearmy.com, 07/27/2009 ,

The fills are fast and the platform is fine, but the customer service is the worst... and I do mean the worst. Representatives have an attitude and don't take anything you say seriously. Trouble tickets are probably thrown in some corner and forgotten.

Tim, forexpeacearmy.com, 07/27/2009 ,

They aren't a forex broker, they are futures and equities, and consider forex secondary. They give you a program called FX Trader, but its part of there main program, so orders go back forth between the two. It gets confusing, and is a bit confusing to use. Margins are extremely high, and they raise them whenever they wan't to protect themselves. Oh yeah they will charge you interest in the currency that your buying or selling and come end of the month they will do a regular fx transfer to cover the expenses. The spread and conversion ratio is poor, and by the way customer service is poor to nonexistent.

PipStar, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

This broker has one of the worst trading platforms I've seen. If you can find your way through it, you'd be doing allright.

jim, forexpeacearmy.com, 07/27/2009 ,

Their customer service is the horrible and their fills are even worse.

After trading for a week with IB, I experienced negative slippage on over 75% of my limit orders and almost 100% of my stops. This was in rather slow moving market conditions. After taking 3.5 pips of slippage on my breakeven+1 stop this morning, I called it quits.

These guys are a joke. Out of 30+ trades, I had positive slippage once and negative slippage every trade either on the limit fill, stop, or break even.

Not to mention they part out orders. Multiple times they parted out my 100k stop order into multiple small orders, charging me multiple commissions for each order. They cannot tell me there wasn't at least 100k at that price point to fill me if they are a true ECN and not just another bucket shop.

If I didn't use Ninja as a front end, I would never have opened an IB account. Their reputation is horrible.

walad, 07/27/2009 ,

I had almost 3 years of experience with them in Stocks (2002-2004). Their platform is OK apart from charting, which I didn't need as I relied on other tools. Their prices were the best.

However, their customer support have attitude. That was even very apparent when I tried to open a FOREX account early 2005. I had to discuss with them the documents that I should send and the customer support were so rude and they even ignored my posts.

As you may see, they do not support Live Chat except for clients. Yes, I remember something very important. They can easily put you in a mess with respect to tax calculations. Their reporting system sucks! (again until 2005's experience).

Levent, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

Stay AWAY!!!

Bad Customer service - totally rude bunch of low lives...

The worst platform ever. Confusing, slow, charts are from 19th century.

The most complicated accounting. You'll always end up with a position even if you open and close the position with the same lot amount.

I can write many more things but short of long is I'd not recommend them to my enemy...

Craig, Forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

Good.
Commission = Great.
Choice of Markets = None better.
3rd Party Software = Good choices (Ninjatrader etc).
Account Insurance.

Bad.
TWS Software = Utter rubbish, trying to do too much at once and failing spectacularly, seasoned users never upgrade until forced due to piss poor testing of new releases.
FX Trading = Confusing, all coversion back to base currency must be done manually.
Customer Service = Utter bullshit, as one user said \'the Communist party of Russia had better customer service\'.
API = Buggy bullshit, each release breaks something new, need to run TWS on the same machine.

Summary.
Cheap commission, but you get what you pay for, good for day trading stocks and futures.
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nexx2k8, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

There a good broker there leverage is low its 40:1 though, There a ECN and the smallest lot size can only be 50k, there platform they offer is pretty bad, but you can use other Front ends like Quotetracker or ninja trader and a few others i think.

razldazl, forexfactory.com, 07/27/2009 ,

...I have used many different brokers and none compare, virtually no slippage, execution immaculate and incredibly low spreads, commissions, costs in general. Charting sucks and so do their help desks, but then again, what help desks are ever any good...