Interactive Brokers Review

I opened an IBKR account about a month ago and it really has been a nightmare of burocracy filling so much documentation. After I started trading many operatives have even been denied because they make it very cumbersome and difficult to know exactly what permissions are configured and which not. After you fill for permission to operate let us say futures or options it takes days to clear and in the meanwhile they never put you up to date.
The support section has a place where I have filled several tickets which have never get answered.
It has a chat section where they put you in hold for hours waiting for a support representative.
I had the patience to wait three days ago for help using the chat but the person who attended me told me to search in their web for answers. I really could not believe it.
I have worked with several brokers and this is by far the worst experience in customer care.

I started an application with Interactivebrokers.com, was told it was sent for review and waiting approval. Later I got a message saying I need to fund my account in order to be considered for approval. That sounded odd but I went ahead and linked my bank account. Even After linking My bank account never got access to my account. Just a page saying my account is waiting for review and approval and I should be patient since you are experiencing overload.

Yesterday $3000 was Transferred from my Bank account to interactive brokers. Sensed Reg Flags, since I did not transfer the money myself only linked my bank account.

I Tried logging into interactive brokers account that was waiting to be approved but now its says my application has been deleted. Tried logging from my desktop but my user account is not allowed for paper trading either. I don't even know what's worse looking all over to how I can contacting you or you stealing my money from my back account and blocking me from an account you haven't even approved.

In my opinion, it's okay if I am not approved but it is not okay for interactive brokers to take money from my account without my permission. Writing to request my money back before I report this as fraud.

You shouldn't take potential clients money if you have no intention of providing the service.

When I applied for an account I thought interactive brokers was a reputable company. Apparently, interactive brokers is a scam. I feel Scammed and taken advantage of. Seems like you tricking people to link their bank accounts, take their money without even them deciding if they really want to do business with you. You have the right to approve me and as a client I have the final right to decide if I want to do business with you by finally transferring my money into my account. I linked my bank and you went ahead and transferred $3000 of my money without my permission.

I never got even an email confirming my account had been approved yet you took my money from my account to which i cannot even access. That's wrong.

Need my money back or hear from someone about this issue. I wonder how many people I treated like this and people don't even know it. I have all the supporting documents and the bank account to prove what you are doing is wrong.

I have already been approved somewhere, they didn't take my money first. I applied, they approved me, I linked my account and transferred as much money as I wanted. What you, Interactive Brokers are doing is wrong.

I have been a commission-paying customer of this broker (as well as other brokers) for over 10 years. IBKR customer non-service is about the worst I have every experienced from any company. AT&T was worse, but not by much. IBKR is obstinate, combative, and lethargic. In any inter-broker transfer it is always "the other broker's fault" according to IBKR. In every single case it has actually been IBKR's screwed up systems that are at fault. They are awful.

On top of the bad CS, their systems break - web account mgmt interface is awful - parts of it don't work or hang up. Chat never works - nobody every shows up.

You would be reasonable to ask "Why then do you use them?" In the early days I found their trading platform to be superior to the competition - and so I put up with the other significant negatives. Now, they can't even get TWS right - they keep fooling with it, breaking formerly-working features. Even the trading platform is now a negative.

Don't go there.

Im been trying to get my money back and close my account with IB and has passed more than a month and still I cant get to withdraw my money, they keep putting my account under review, I have called many times, talking to random Indian people that hardly you can understand what they say and you will never get a helpful answer, they will never connect you with a supervisor or manager, an they say they will call you back, and they DONT. Only option I have now is to file a FINRA complaint to report them.
here is the link if someone need it.
https://firms.di.finra.org/cdip-dynoapp/anon/accessForm;jsessionid=FE33BC89DF13D6BF821D4115398388A3?requestInstanceId=4591699

I hope this is helpful to anyone with IB issues out there.
stay safe.

I suggest to consider someone else. I'm currently reporting them to Finra, SEC and I also have a mediation request for them to approve. Next will be arbitration to recover money lost due to the Trading workstation not sending out a sell order. Literally the sell button just flashes or just do nothing and order does not go. I have videos to prove it. News and charts lose connection and won't load.I have screen shots to prove it. I'm on a 2gb dedicated line on a brand new Dell xps desktop with 32gb ram. The TWS software is the worst of all of them. Loses connection at least 10 times a day during trading. Most of the time it cannot reconnect on his own so you have to restart the platform. Customer support does not answer for days. Some of my tickets are still unanswered since March. I have been waiting for a month for a reply regarding the money lost on that trade I described before. I was told 15/20 working days. Then they just disappeared. That is why the Finra arbitration is next. Don't consider this company. EVER!

They sold my shares with out my knowledge and closed my account. To me this is theft. If I was getting charged a fee you would at least think they would send you a statement. I received nothing from this company. I was not even notified that my account was closed.

Interactive brokers is awful. I missed out on so many great plays because their options strike prices always go blank. Not only do they go blank restricting you from making a great trade. If they go blank on you when you're in a position you are straight sexed. Sometimes they go blank for 5-10 mins. If you're in position it doesn't let you exit when it's blank. Think about how much damage could be caused to your account when you look for a heavy sized 45 second scalp, and you can't get out for 10 mins .... Ya. This happened to me several times. I have filed for a compensation but who knows if I'll get it. Either way, I'm done with interactive poopers. Just thinking about them makes my blood boil. They will steal your money without hesitation. Also, not sure where they get their customer service reps. Every time you go in a live chat the representative gets dumber and dumber every time. You may as well talk to the closest wall, at least the wall can't give you a stupid response in return. AWFUL DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THEM YOU WILL HAVE A HEART ATTACK

Website is next to useless. Can't access tax reports. Very unhelpful when ring them up. Tell you to ring a number that doesn't exist. Was locked out and they wont reset my password. Terrible to deal with.

WORST WORST WORST broker/system/platform. Do not use Interactive Brokers if you can avoid it/don't have to! Maybe its cool if you really need all their products or different if you have have boatloads of money and maybe they actually look after you - but if you're a smaller investor then essentially they tell you to SUCK IT and deal with their nonsense. (I had about AUD40k securities with them at one point plus a bunch of cash cos of their stupid rules and it was STILL AWFUL).
So you can just trust me or read my highlights [lowlights] of all the terrible parts that make up the whole of the mess that is IB.

NB: I only needed to trade Australian and US equities (wanted to do bonds but never got around to it), and manage my cash. I was required to use them because of compliance requirements at my previous firm, but I have finally been able to escape the hell-hole that is IB due to a change of firm.

1. Their systems (both on app and web platform) are horrendous - security is so tight (cool sure, to a certain degree, but it's really overdone!!!) you have to log in multiple times, use a phone token etc etc and half the time it just logs you out anyway or crashes. Functionality goes down often, its not intuitive, things are really hard to find, its slow.

2. Sure they have a low cost-per-trade and other low fees/costs and you can trade bonds or whatever, but you pay for it in other ways. If you have less than AUD20k just sitting in your cash acct and aren't trading actively (also your money is not earning interest because why would IB ever actually do anything to help you), they charge you a monthly fee - at my current savings acct interest rate which is one of the best, if not the best rate in the market, it would take me nearly 4 months just to earn back the monthly fee I pay. If you withdraw cash more than once a month, boom you get a charge. Even when I was finally able to escape from them, BOOM AUD55 charge just so my new broker could do all the work processing the transfer, and IB sit back and collect AUD55. Then they mysteriously take another AUD16 out my account for no reason, before I can shut down my account. Even depositing money in is a two-step, slow, archiac nightmare.
They even once liquidated a portion of one of my share positions because my cash funds were running low (I didn't realise at this time THEY CHARGED YOU JUST FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF KEEPING YOUR CASH WITH THEM), which then got me in trouble with compliance because I didn't have pre-approval to sell the share - IB just went ahead and made the decision for me anyway and I got a trade confo after the fact!

3. Getting any sort of help from them is incredibly frustrating. Calling in - you are on hold for ages and the people are pretty much all useless and never do what you ask anyway, or you get transferred to someone else and they still can't help. If you chat with them online you get generic 'computer says no' answers or you get told to raise a web ticket, where you get another 'computer says no' answer and nothing really ever gets resolved properly (maybe half the time, in a semi-efficient manner?). Then when you finally get a response on a web ticket, they don't email you, oh no, nothing every gets sent right to your email, you have to log back into their rubbish app or platform and go to the stupid message inbox, by which time (most of the time) the system either breaks or you have to do YET ANOTHER LOG IN ! Wow.

I could go on but I think you get the picture. AVOID AVOID AVOID IB! Try someone else first. Or try IB first, waste your time and money, and then move to another broker :)

It will save you your sanity!

I've been trying to get my money back been over 10 days decided to call and they told me I needed a photo ID. I believe they required this when I set my account up. Had I not called I would never had known. Plain and simple they suck stay away. If they had zero stars I would have given it to them

Good commissions, average trade platform, but chaotic margin handling and extremely poor and bad customer service. Bay far the worst CS. Inexpert and bounder. Rarely receive specific answer to my questions, usually 1 sentence or a copy+paste bullpoo. Getting fed up with them.

IF I can convince just 1 person to stay away then it will hopefully prevent another person from getting charged $1000 over the course of 3 years draining my account to $0 with fees. Screw these guys.

Honestly I thought Etrade and TD Ameritrade had problems, but Interactive Brokers made me feel lucky to be customers of these other two brokers. I can't believe IB is even allowed to advertise itself as a broker it's that horrible. Half the time the website doesn't work, the mobile application usually works but it's so crowded and convoluted I find it impossible to actually use for trading, and the desktop application looks like it was created in the 1980s and is almost unusable. Most of the time I have to login multiple times to the website just to successfully load my account details. They have this ridiculous "two factor auth" app that you must download to your phone just to be able to login to your account, instead of doing something smart like just using google authenticator.

Maybe if they had focused on creating one single useful platform like a website OR an app, OR a desktop application they would have succeeded at one instead of royally screwing up all three. And "low cost" isn't an excuse - Robinhood works just fine and they don't chart any trading fees.

The only reason someone might want to use IB is if they desperately need to be able to trade stocks on foreign exchanges. I can't imagine any other reason to put yourself through the horror of it.

The following are my opinions and experiences with Interactive Brokers. They took my money in a fiduciary relationship and converted it , defrauded my account, failed to disclose all fees. gouged my account and in the end half of my funds had become I.A.s, the stock losses and transfer fees were about 5% of the losses. Hopefully there company will be arrested for these frauds. I am experienced investor and have never been financially violated by a Gatekeeper of my funds before.

AVOID AT ALL COST!!! So much hidden fees! Don't let their low commission trades full you, they will make it all up with hidden fees. My Roth IRA has been charged with crazy amount of fees. Trying them out was the worst thing I ever did.

Deposits are easy...no so with withdrawals/wires. I followed their directions to a tee and they still refused/declined it.

For sure they rob your money. They Rob small retail traders and help the big sharks to profit.

I lost all my hard earned money.
They developed an AI algorithm which tracks the small retail traders finds out their stop loss zone or their preset to hit the stop loss.

The moment you get stopped out, you can see level At level 2 and Tape the price will fly.

My expensive lesson learned: don’t get attracted by low commissions. This people are really high tech robbers.

1- They move the market against you for an unknown spread.
2- Quotes are always delayed even if you subscribe to real-time market data. If you complain, they tell you bla. bla. bla. Instrument price is always 15 to 20 cents higher or lower than market price so they can move the spread against you.
3- Wherever your stop is placed, they go get it then the price goes back to the real market price.
4- They will charge accrued interests on forex trades for positions you have closed already.
5- The high and low of day / hr is always different from market by 15 or 20 cents.
6- Their Mosaic trading platform glitches and freeze.
7- Extremely poor customer service. Their representatives are well trained to give you no clear answer and put your call on hold for as long as you hang up.

Overall they will rob you out. You'll never make money with interactive brokers.

I was very much interested in opening accounts at IB until I had contact with Mike Brady from the sales department in Chicago. He was a little “short” with me, and so I decided against it based purely on that interaction.

I recently opened an IB account in addition to my existing TD Ameritrade Account for a side by side comparison. My conclusion corroborates what others are saying here: IB is either trading against you OR, allowing one of their large clients to. There seems to be either a delay in the data or a total disconnect with the time and sales data emanating from IB that is always to the DISadvantage to my account. Conclusion: Avoid

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!!!!!!!!!!

I switched to IB from TD Ameritrade for the lower fee's a month ago and I couldn't be more disappointed. The Trader Workstation platform is terrible, it's unorganized and tough to navigate through, the charting is bad, you have to pay for just about any type of data, the Account Summary is downright shady, the list goes on... It will literally take you a month to get used to the platform. I've been trading for 10 years and have traded on TD, Etrade, and Scottrade as well and have never experienced anything like this. The Intraday Margin Requirements move to overnight 15 minutes before pits and exchanges close depending on what you're trading. They claim their "SMART Routing Multipurpose" is top of the line but I'm not getting fills like I did for years with other brokerages. I mostly trade Futures, some FX, and maintain a portfolio of stocks, and my results have suffered significantly. It honestly feels like they are trading against you. But the worst part about IB is their Customer Service. They are completely useless and disrespectful. If you're thinking about transferring to IB for cheap commissions, DON'T! It's not worth it.

The best platform ever . The customer service can improve a but nothing beats this fast and cheap service.

Hi there .this is the most worst broker platform i have ever used in my life .i traded UBS ,Baxter,hotspot and many other small platforms .it always hang out very complected and it coast you so much and prices don't reflect real market movement .if you enter a position you will always have a big draw down i don't advice any one to trade with them unless they do a proper correction to there behavior

IB is not only the worst broker but one of the worst companies I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

I transferred money in to fund a CTA account. The day of the transfer they upped their min account size for CTAs thus stopping me from trading. Nice of them to warn me or the CTA himself.
No amount of reasoning from him (even though he brings lots of custom) would change their mind.
I therefore decided to transfer the money out to another broker.

It has taken me months and months to get the money (still haven't got it out).
The transfer was refused as they took 1/10th a cent out of my account saying it was an interest adjustment (I earned no interest on this account, nor should I have been charged anything - no positions were opened or closed).
I assume it was a rounding error in one of their systems.

So after weeks of trying to transfer the money, I transfered 1 cent less.
The transfer goes out but then gets lost as they didn't enter the correct account number.
The receiving bank returns the payment but IB can't locate it.

This is still ongoing.
No one seems to care and my complaints don't get answered.

They send vague messages on their internal message system, which is as bad as the rest of their site.
It's also a complete pain in the a** to login as they have a complicated security process that seems to expire and get confused etc. meaning I have a tough time logging in sometimes.

Overall a horrible experience and I'm yet to get my money back or be offered any apology or compensation.

Avoid like the plague.

Interactive Brokers has proven to be a sub-par broker and broker platform. I trade equities and currencies and their performance is worse than than the other broker platforms I use.
It seems like you get what you pay for, and their very cheap costs are nullified by their poor performance.
Also, "customer service" at IB is an oxymoron.

Everything in 1 place, great execution, great spreads, though their swap rate are not the best. I am using them for FX and stocks.

Interactive brokers are scammers. Stay away from these shady brokers. They will deactivate your account login just to have you call their customer support number.

Instead, when you call them, they attempt to sell you add-ons these you don't even need. Horrible experience. Much rather work with a real broker instead of these scammers. Buyer be aware.

Interactive Brokers has best execution and lowest commission / spreads. They are good at this. I only trade futures even currencies and thier commssion is lowest that help me make good scalp trades. Thier platform and customer service is okay or worse sometimes. But trust me, in trading execution and commission counts, anything else is just nice to have but not necessary.

First of all, these guys have no regard for their customers. They failed to exercise options worth $8000, supposedly as risk prevention. If you understand how giving away your money somehow protects your account, you are smarter than me. Note, I am not talking about market priced liquidations. I am talking about giving away options of considerable value, and getting nothing in return.

Second, the Web Trader product is completely unreliable. I have witnessed it change terms of my order entry on its own. Further, the site constantly becomes unresponsive.

Third, the company recently adopted a policy of "preemptive liquidation". This means that even if you are in margin compliance, they might still liquidate you if they think you MAY not be in margine compliance the next day. This is bad. Worse, if you call Interactive Brokers and ask them which positions they are concerned about, or which positions may be liquidated, they can't tell you. IB engages in this practice even while claiming it cannot accurately predict future margin requirements. In fact, more times than not, in my personal experience, IB's pre-emptive liquidations have not only failed to reduce margin requirements, but actually served to INCREASE them.

Fourth, after putting up with this cr** for too long, i tried to transfer my assets to another broker. Interactive Brokers was not cooperative with this process.

There are a host of other reasons to not use Interactive Brokers, and i will add to them at a future time.

This is my first blog EVER. I have nothing to gain from writing it, but i do hope to prevent others from making the same mistake I did by signing up with this horror of a brokerage firm.

All the bad reviewers are blaming IB for their bad trades. Look at their spreads man. Nobody can come close, not even Oanda. They do not trade against you. They did not get to be that big by deception and fraud. They are exceedingly good at what they do: Execution at bare bones prices. That is their game, and their only game, and they at the top of it.

I read the comments on Interactive Brokers and was shocked. I have had excellent (not perfect) service with any inquiry made on trades, commissions, fees, etc. In general, I have had no major problems. Their platform takes some learning time but works fine; their margin rates are the lowest I can find; they need more documentation for their platform and the format is awful. The firm is rated best by Barron's. I can't believe the responses here.

Traded with IB for many years. They don't trade against you. There are no re-quotes, I often get price improvement one limit orders - YES LIMIT orders. And I love the fact that I work orders between teh already tight spreas - ie. if I see a 1 1/2 pip spread, I can better the bid and quite often get my fill.

Service, it's hit or miss. I find the HK office quite good when I need to call but there are different levels of experience on their service desk. I rarely have to contact them though as things run very smoothly. Most important for me is that they are well capitalized and run a conservative business.

IB started fine. It is turning into a deplorable outfit with appalling customer service. The owner of this operation needs to listen on the phone conversations his workers have with clients. There is obviously no quality control with regards to professionalism and decency. I had some complaints and recommendations and instead of compassion I got a gangster attitude and smart alek responses. Most of the people who work there are very professional but the one who ruins it ruins it for everyone. I am seriously thinking of going to the competition as soon as I can find a broker that is on the same level. The owner of this company obviously does not have a role in monitoring and weeding out shockingly rude behaviour to simple questions regarding new products and why IB doesn't have new products it should have. Instead of writing down the responses they just tell you to make an online request, which is a hassle because Google Chrome does not work well, with their platform. The guy who answered didn't have the decency to refer me to tech support, was apathetic,and said the Google Chrome issue was "your problem". He had no intention of making his customer happy and just answers the phone for his paycheck. A smart alec,antagonistic, rude punk answers the phone, not a civilized professional. And when I requested to speak to customer service, I was put on hold forever. I gave up. State officials and the Better Business Bureau should be notified.

No possibility to complaint with Interactive brokers Asia and Salvatore Recco

Due to instability of Interactive Brokers systems and incompetence of "Salvatore Recco", I lost lot of money. It would not have happened with a competent and professional broker. But Salvatore Recco(Head of Institutional Services Asia) was slow, not polite, unprofessional, giving lame excuses and possibly make big money on my back.

0/IB asia has no independent complaint officer(the CEO so wont bother to answer). If a senior IB staff is incompetent, you could not complain.No one is checking what they are doing in Asia, so manipulations of the records/transactions and wrong doing can be done by their staffs in Asia.
1/ zero transparency: you wont get any records ( transaction, transcripts,...). "Salvatore Recco" is blocking my access to any records because he made the mistakes.
2/ you will not be able to speak or see face to face, "Salvatore Recco"or a manager or a complaint officer in Hong Kong or Asia. They will just hide and send you a small potato guy.Thank to The small potato, I discovered that Salvatore Recco was lying and the staff might know his wrong doing.
3/ IB/Salvatore Recco will hide and refer you to a US complaint or any virtual manager in other continents.
4/ their methods in order that you give up your complaints, its their complaints tickets systems, it will take many months/ years instead of a day. They will tell you that they will get back to you within few days but instead give you lame excuses few month later. By that time all records could be modified by IB.
5/they have many others tricks so be careful, they can make you push to accept new rules at their favors when you later login,...
6/ they are not going to compensate you for their staffs mistakes for sure! Because They do not have any compensation fund aside in Asia !

On internet I find others complaints about "Salvatore Recco", if you have any problems with him or IB, please help me. I spend money on a lawyer and complaint SFC and regulator without any answer!!!
Help me because "Salvatore Recco" is blocking my complaint as he was the one involved and a head and possibly make a big money in my back!

After reading the poor reviews, I think I needed to come in the defense of IB. I've had an IB account probably for over 10 years. Tried many other brokers and this one is the best for me. I think most of the problems are 1) people do not take the time to learn their platform, they have many online courses to do that; 2) if your trade gets closed out because of your low margin, reread their policy; 3) IB is geared to professionals and if you need hand holding they are not the place for you to start. Their phone support is poor. 4) They are one of the largest brokers with the most capital in the world and do not do high risk trading where they will disappear with your money - if you don't think about the safety of your account your playing with fire at other brokers 5) they have the best ways to interface into their platfrom if you have that level of sophistication, ie, Java, C++, Excel etc. Others don't come close. 6) Seems some of the bad posts are from their competitors :)

IB has the worst customer service in the world. They actively lie to you and most of the time will never get back to you. They will not speak with you period. If there is a problem, they won't resolve it. For three months I have tried to spend our soft dollar and finally, we just switched brokers and still have tons left and now they are saying, well you can't use softdollars because you're closing, yet for three months, they wouldn't retun emails or chats or anything. SIMPLY TERRIBLE STAY AWAY. There are too many other options. Note, they are missing earings as people see how bad they really are.

I thought I was the only one to dislike IB but I see lots of folks here so too. I have used them for many years for day trading and long term positions. My two biggest issues are

A) the appalling platform. If you are a professional stick with them, but if you are little guy better start off with the bucket shops because this platform will kill your account. I am not even sure what the learning curve for professionals can be !!. This TWS is so unfriendly that you are better off using their rudimentary web trader or their iPhone app.

B) the accounting needs a PhD in finance !! I never figured out what my PnL were. I saw charges here and there, several currencies floating around, a complete mess for someone who only needs to know the basics. I could only figure out my PnL using my own notes

Service can be bad and irritating sometimes. I also noticed that with several executions on my unattended stop/limit working orders IB would go against me: i.e. On several limit orders I was not filled less 1 point/pip and then the position would take off leaving me with large lost profits. In stop orders I would get filled on the last point/pip and then the position would go against me. I checked the charts many times against my timing and they didn't make sense. I didn't contact CS because it's impossible.

However their margin rates seem incredibly low ~1.8% when most brokers offer 2.5%-7%. Commission are extremely low and spread are too good to be true. Still I believe all these low rates come at the very high price of my above points. I never felt secure trading with them as I was lost into that maze of their accounting and platform.

It's your choice, but if you are small stick with a bucket shop with a friendly interface even at higher charges and keep your losses small and understand your charges well. I must say at this point that one needs to educate himself very good about trading. If you don't understand how your broker works could be because he doesn't want you too. Trading and all related broker services should be simple and clear or your account will suffer.

IB is cheap. Don't buy a Honda and expect Rolls Royce service. I have been using them for over 2 years now, and although service is lousy and TWS is unbelievably complicated (and gets completely updated / changed the very moment you think you have it sorted out), I have found them stable, reliable and by far the cheapest.

My advice, if you do straight forward, high volume trading - and you know what you doing - use IB. If you are new to the game, experimenting or put off by overly complicated technology, get somebody else.

I traded Forex and Futures with them. I made over 100 trades per day and traded over 100 Lots per day in the major forex pairs. I can say they trade against you. They notice your actions. On other broker the same system and parameters made gains but not when at IB. It is a bit strange, but they adapt the prices in a certain way that my systems do not work. Other problem with IB is liquidity. For the most major pairs you have only 1 MM per side. Ok, on EURUSD you can trade up to 5 or 10 MM. But this is not much when you see their spreads. Trading 10 lots on EURUSD at the same time is not much, if you have some strategies with autotrading. Other brokers have up to 50 MM per side on EURUSD. Well, but only Reuters Dealing or within a bank you have access to liquidity. But IB says we are the biggest and best and so on. If you test it in reality it is not so good. Sometimes I have watched the executions within seconds. I have seen that before the trade price was given the bid or ask side changed one tick against me. Always against me, time, size etc. does not matter. After some weeks it did disappear. After first week everything was ok. But after that nothing worked when I compare it to other brokers. Try some of the swiss brokers for Forex. I have seen some good ones but I did not trade it with multiple 100 lots per day, I must say. If you have the money try Reuters or do it within a bank. DBFX does not exist anymore. So there are only Citi and UBS as global players in Forex trading. Anything else is only a game or bet against the broker. I had a very good opinion for IB before I made lots of trades. My experiences 10 years ago were excellent in futures trading. And yes, IB is only white label.

Avoid IB like the plague!!!!
Interactive brokers are idiots with options. I was holding a credit spread with a fixed loss and fixed margin that they force liquidated despite the fact that i had plently of excess liquidity and my margin was non fluctuating. They said i voilated their leverage threshold intra day and i posed danger to the firm. How is that possible when i was holding a fixed loss position that my account was able to cover the max loss??? idiots! im arbitrating against finra for my money back. They said anytime the gross position value to net liquidation value is above 50:1 they auto liquidate with little regard. They dont even disclose this anywhere on their forms. They would not turn off their auto liquidator either when i complained, i had to transfer the positions out of there to another broker before i was robbed of everything. End of story i lost 30% of my account value in 2 days to their wrecklessness.