Interactive Brokers Review

You lose a lot of money with your trading account with these guys. If you become just a wee bit deficient in your margin, they immediately liquidate every trade position in your account at market orders. Also at times on weekends, your account may retrieve nothing or missing pieces of info on your account. You may even receive incorrect password even while giving your correct password and you simply can't log in to view your account or place orders. Then later, all in 'well again' with your account. Also at times pre entered orders just disappear from your account even with 'GTC' selected. And lastly you can become disconnected at any time online, even after just a minute or so. Try entering a trade then!

I use IB as it is almost a one stop shop and its transaction cost is low. This is no doubt about it. I am still using IB. But I share my experience with you guys so that you know something could happy. I use their online TWS platform. It is not a very friendly platform to me initially especially their Stop options. I bought a certain amount of low volume/movement stock and set a stop limit of 10% against the bug price ($1.01). As was not familiar with the stop setting, I called their staff to guide me the steps.. Two days later, 15 mins before the market closed, my stock was hacked to sell out at $0.67 (a lot below my stop loss at $0.9!). It bounced back to $0.98 on market closed - I screened printed all the transactions and believed they were done by programs. I lost $13,xxx on that attack. Nobody would have known I had set unlimit stop loss on that stock except their staff. That was the lesson learned. One more advice is, if possible, don't just set stop loss and leave. My experience with IB has always been "the stop losses always hit" and most of the time they were the lowest of the days! You may wonder why it happens always. I am convinced they don't just live on commissions.

Solid execution, numerous markets, low costs, good technology. It's not an easy platform to learn but as a platform for executing my trading strategies, this is a very good broker.

I switched to IB from TD Ameritrade looking to save some money on commissions. I will say that I have extensive trading experience and am not blaming anyone for any lack on my part. I have traded with over a dozen different FX brokers over the years and I have to say that IB has hands down the worst execution of any broker I have ever dealt with. I trade EURUSD and GBPUSD during the most liquid time of the day and I never trade during news events, yet on my stop entries and stop losses I have to say that I get slipped an average of 2-2.5 pips. Thats an average people. This is during normal trading hours with absolutely no volatility catalysts of any kind. This is not an accident since the limit targets are the only orders that are actually placed on the exchange. Of course that means that I have NEVER once gotten positive slippage on an exit at my target. All other orders ,ie your stops, are held on the platform and are only sent to the exchange after they have been triggered. This of course means that there is a delay of several seconds from the time it is triggered and the time it is filled. This means that any even remotely brisk push that triggers your exit or stop entry will be slipped on average about 2-2.5 pips or more. This may not seem like much but if you are day trading then this quickly adds up to quadruple my commissions from what the actual flat commission fee is. The only way to avoid this is to use stop limit orders, which is what I do, but i cannot recommend this for any trader who is not very experienced because you will at times not get filled on you stop loss and you better damn well know what you doing to work the best exit possible. Almost every time this happens price pulls back and allows me a way out, but this is not for the faint of heart and IB knows it. So far with futures they seem to be ok but for FX I would say to avoid them like the plague.

I used IB since it was marketed as an all in one Brokerage firm. However, I only used them for daytrading the futures markets. On the many occasions that I called customer support, I was on hold for an average time of 5 to 10 minutes. However, the worst scenario I have ever experienced happened when I saw that the platform had erroneously entered me into a trade on Brent Crude oil, a market that I did not even trade. I tried repeatedly to exit this trade, and guess what, the platform would not let me exit the trade no matter how hard I tried. During these futile attempts to exit the trade, I was on hold from IB support and finally, after 10 minutes, someone answered the phone. When I explained the issue, he said, you entered a short trade on Brent Crude, and I said, I do not even trade this market, how could that be possible. He manually exited the trade for me for a loss of over $600.00.

I filed a complaint against IB and it was like a circus in the making. Some manager got on the phone, tried to recite the facts as he had received them from someone else, and these facts were 100% incorrect. They attempted to put the blame on me, saying I had placed the trade myself and it had nothing to do with anything that IB did or did not do. It was like talking to a bunch of idiots who could not tell anyone which way was up or which way was down; I could tell it was a scam in the making and all the complaining I did was to no avail. I immediately closed my account and have told as many people as possible about their practices and I will say it again. If you are looking for an honest, reliable brokerage, go look somewhere else. These guys are looking for excuses to scam their clients and do it in a way that they feel the client has no recourse but arbitration. The worst, most obscene excuse for a brokerage firm I have ever had the occasion of dealing with. I say, AVOID THESE CHARLATANS AT ALL COST, OR YOUR TRADING ACCOUNT WILL SUFFER!

I love interactive brokers. Low spreads and cheap commissions..Good executions, they are geared towards professional traders. So not the best for people who are just starting out or trade little.

IB is one of my favorite brokers. First off they are US based / regulated, publicly traded and have a large asset base in both retail and institutional accounts. Their main business is global individual stocks. This puts me at ease in a way, because FX is not their core revenue stream. The TWS platform is excellent and very robust. Good charting, customizablility and tools are also a plus. That being said, the main reason IB is one of my favorite brokers is due to the cost of trading. For FX spreads are among the tightest I've ever seen and execution has been good. My only gripe is with stop orders. If I place a sell or buy stop, there is almost always a delay between the time the order is triggered and the time the order is executed. I believe this is because of their STP model. Since they have to send the order away, it causes this delay. Usually around 2 - 5 seconds. This also happens with equities. Not a deal breaker, but it can definitely cost you big time if you have huge blocks at play. Leverage is average for he USA at 40:1. I don't think you will need more than this unless you are trying to get rich quick. To summarize, I love IB because of their platform, service, support, size, regulation, ACH funding and low cost. I dislike the delays in stop orders. Overall, I love to trade with them.

Excellent execution, fair platform , can trade any market , low fees, good reports,

Haven't got an account from IB, but decided to give it up after reading so many bad reviews and plus my bad experience in opening account with them.
I handed in my first application online two week ago, I've uploaded my bank statement, Canadian driver license whatever they asked.
Got first rejection saying that I have to upload my Canadian SIN card photo copy since I'm currently living in Canada.
OK, I uploaded my SIN card and received the 2nd rejection, saying since I had a Canadian SIN then I need to reopen a new application and fill in "Canada" in residence field.
So I opened a new application and attached the same bank statement I've using in previous application, got 3rd rejection saying that my bank statement is out of date, actually the bank statement was from last month and I guess they didn't even open it for review.
So I replied them that the bank statement was the latest one and tried to upload it again.
Now, I've got my 4th rejection saying that they want a debit card statement not the credit card statement!
Don't even bother to apply again, after reading so many interesting reviews, absolutely disappointing.

IB trades against you (or the bank they use -- JPMorgan -- trades against you as they have unlimited Fed money to do it). I have traded thousands of trades with them and 10's of thousands of trades with other brokers over more than a decade (profitablly I might add) -- and the way the market recognies your entry with them again and again is rediculous -- they trade against you or the bank they use trades against you. Day trading with them is an absolute scam. You have to trade small and hold for longer periods to make money with them. Any broker that advertises how profitable their Fx customers are should be avoided -- just like the used car salesman that tells you how honest he is. They don't make their money on commisions, they make it on market making. The low rates are the bait. When you deposit funds with their bank then the name of the game for them is to move as much of your funds to their side of the ledger. They trade against you. They target active traders as these are the easiest targets I think.

2010-03-08 2Star It is impossible to reach customer service after market hours. If you have any problems during the market hour, deal with it yourself, because you will not get any assistance from IB. The quickest way is chat, but I have watied for over 30 min. during market hours. If you get anyone on the phone, they are always so dipressed.
Your stops will receive the worst fills and the system will freeze when volatily pick up. It may seem convinint to trade all markets from one platform, but it is not woth it. This truly is the worst brokerage experience we ever had. Stay away!!!!!!!!!!