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Interactive Brokers - experiences and opinions

  • #441
  • Feb 2, 2013 5:06am Feb 2, 2013 5:06am
Quoting mitch77
Nothing wrong with LMAX and ATC I have small accounts with both
Don't say that there is anything wrong and I am also opening an account with one. It's more like finding out if this works reliable and if yes, then there is a good solution to trade through mt4 with IB, which is not bad.
  • #442
  • Feb 2, 2013 7:27am Feb 2, 2013 7:27am
Quoting pbb
Curiosity is fine if you want so. I really don't know if they support other products besides forex, I am only interested in fx and haven't looked any further then attaching it for fx.
Why would I reference it? By doing so this thread could be banned to the commercial section and that wouldn't really help anyone that wants to trade through Interactive Brokers but wants mt4 for charting/ea's etc.
Why am I mentioning it? Because I think (when tested reliable) that it's of great value for what I do and I think it could be for a lot of other traders....
I'm so, proudly, out of touch with this madhouse of a forum I overlooked the fact that nobody is allowed to have an opinion about a commercial product. Anyways, I will have a looksie as one of my clients is trading with IB and I have no way to give him my EA without an MT4 bridge. Cheers for the heads up.
  • #443
  • Feb 3, 2013 1:53pm Feb 3, 2013 1:53pm
Quoting pbb
Atc, lcg, lmax
thanks
  • #444
  • Feb 7, 2013 12:27pm Feb 7, 2013 12:27pm
Quoting mitch77
Nothing wrong with LMAX and ATC I have small accounts with both
Do you know, if LMAX offers a MT4 platform? I did not saw it on their webpage.

Regards,
Forex Lion
  • #445
  • Feb 7, 2013 1:12pm Feb 7, 2013 1:12pm
Quoting Forex Lion
Do you know, if LMAX offers a MT4 platform? I did not saw it on their webpage.

Regards,
Forex Lion
Yes they do offer MT4, they just don't seem to advertise it.

Cheers.
  • #446
  • Feb 7, 2013 1:37pm Feb 7, 2013 1:37pm
Quoting mitch77
Yes they do offer MT4, they just don't seem to advertise it.

Cheers.
ok, thanks...
  • #447
  • Feb 28, 2013 10:11pm Feb 28, 2013 10:11pm
There is only ONE noun to describe TWS chart: crap. It's clear that Forex is not where IB chooses to specialize. I am sure they get lot more revenue from brokering in other financial instruments and Spot FX for them is probably just a tag-along. They boast on their website that they get "Barron's Award" for being best broker; I don't think it's for FX for sure. I mean you can't see the price clearly on the chart let along draw a decent indicator.

Excel produces a better chart than TWS chart. Aside from Excel, there are LOTS of Charting softwares you can use to draw decent FX charts for you using IB's data feed, Ninja Trader (be aware of bad spiky data though, Ninja Trader claims it's IB's data feed problem but it's really Ninja Trader's problem and Ninja Trader uses this to push you to pay to use their own Kinetics data), MultiCharts, Sierra Charts, MT4 (when you pay for a bridge), and of course, the pricey eSignal just to name a few.
Make your losses in demo. Earn your profits live.
  • #448
  • Mar 1, 2013 9:15am Mar 1, 2013 9:15am
Here's another ongoing problem with TWS charts -- when you draw or move a trend line, you have a 50/50 chance of the endpoint changing.

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You can always make money tomorrow provided you don't lose it today.
  • #449
  • Mar 1, 2013 9:38am Mar 1, 2013 9:38am
Quoting Forexia
There is only ONE noun to describe TWS chart: crap. It's clear that Forex is not where IB chooses to specialize. I am sure they get lot more revenue from brokering in other financial instruments and Spot FX for them is probably just a tag-along. They boast on their website that they get "Barron's Award" for being best broker; I don't think it's for FX for sure. I mean you can't see the price clearly on the chart let along draw a decent indicator. ...
I'm not so sure. Since they take a commission for each trade they make very little from people maintaining their stock portfolios, a little more from those trading options, but most of their income is going to come from active traders, particularly those utilizing margin where they'll also collect interest, and that means Forex and futures traders. Certainly there are those that daytrade stocks, but the $20k minimum to daytrade US stocks is going to steer those investors without a lot of cash towards Forex and futures even if that isn't something they initially considered doing.

Whatever the case may be, I think as long as IB is making money they won't care about their customers, and until they start losing marketshare to someone that can compete on price they'll never bother updating their software.
You can always make money tomorrow provided you don't lose it today.
  • #450
  • Mar 1, 2013 12:07pm Mar 1, 2013 12:07pm
Quoting KADC

Whatever the case may be, I think as long as IB is making money they won't care about their customers, and until they start losing marketshare to someone that can compete on price they'll never bother updating their software.
Oh there is plenty of brokers, ECN brokers that is that can compete with IB, all right. IB's spread is tight but NOT the tightest. Their commission is low but NOT the lowest. They are only able to have good marketshare maybe in Canada because the pin-head Canadian financial industry watchdog, IIROC forbids foreign brokers to take Canadian residents as clients. Yes, government protectionism at best!! But they can't hide behind that trade barrier forever, eventually it's going to come down and when Canadian residents are able to get access to more choices of foreign brokers, the current horrible TWS charts will be in the garbage can where it belongs!
Make your losses in demo. Earn your profits live.
  • #451
  • Mar 1, 2013 12:34pm Mar 1, 2013 12:34pm
Quoting Forexia
Oh there is plenty of brokers, ECN brokers that is that can compete with IB, all right. IB's spread is tight but NOT the tightest. Their commission is low but NOT the lowest. They are only able to have good marketshare maybe in Canada because the pin-head Canadian financial industry watchdog, IIROC forbids foreign brokers to take Canadian residents as clients. Yes, government protectionism at best!! But they can't hide behind that trade barrier forever, eventually it's going to come down and when Canadian residents are able to get access to...
That's a good point about the Canadian market (and we'll see foreign ownership of our banks before the rules change), but I presume the bulk of IB's clients are American, so how are they competing against lower commission/lower spread competition with (what has to be) far superior software? Is it because they're the best known from their constant advertising and being around the longest, or are most of their customers too naive to realise how terrible their software is?

Perhaps if more customers didn't accept IB's excuses for TWS shortcomings and kept on them constantly (I've got two guys working on my issues -- which they can never solve because it's the software -- about every other day, and I reopen every ticket that customer support try to close that isn't actually solved) they'd find it worth their while to either update TWS or buy out someone else's charting package.
You can always make money tomorrow provided you don't lose it today.
  • #452
  • Mar 1, 2013 1:33pm Mar 1, 2013 1:33pm
Quoting KADC
That's a good point about the Canadian market (and we'll see foreign ownership of our banks before the rules change), but I presume the bulk of IB's clients are American, so how are they competing against lower commission/lower spread competition with (what has to be) far superior software? Is it because they're the best known from their constant advertising and being around the longest, or are most of their customers too naive to realise how terrible their software is?

Perhaps if more customers didn't accept IB's excuses for TWS shortcomings...
Well since Forex has been around longer in the US than in Canada, I would say IB faces more competition in the US than in Canada. For one, there are many more ECN brokers in the US than in Canada, MB Trading, right off the bat is at least as competitive if not cheaper than IB in both spread and in commission than IB. MB Trading actually pays you commission for putting liquidity into the market. So if you are a savvy trader and who gets limit orders executed all the time, you are earning commissions not paying commissions. Many of the non-US brokers have also opened US offices and extend ECN brokering, Alpari US, FXCM (having bought the ECN brokerage business from HotSpot FX), FXOpen, not to mention other ECN networks such as Currenex, EBS and etc. I highly doubt that they will not be as competitive as IB especially with so many introducers around and notice that IB has NO introducing broker/agents/partnerships with anybody.

So maybe if everybody leaves them in droves, maybe they will get the message and start to want to do something about their horrible TWS.
Make your losses in demo. Earn your profits live.
  • #453
  • May 19, 2013 7:27pm May 19, 2013 7:27pm
anyone have same chart spike problem with IB?
how do you trade this?
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  • #454
  • Jun 19, 2013 6:37am Jun 19, 2013 6:37am
Well TWS looks horrible and definitely got bugs from what I can tell in this thread.

Nonetheless, I am considering opening an account with them since they are the only broker (that I know of) who offer an API for directly accessing market feeds. I will therefore not be using TWS but my own plotting and trading app.

Anyone have experience of this or any advice before I take the plunge?
cryptocurrency everytime
  • #455
  • Jun 19, 2013 6:58am Jun 19, 2013 6:58am
Quoting venzen
Well TWS looks horrible and definitely got bugs from what I can tell in this thread. Nonetheless, I am considering opening an account with them since they are the only broker (that I know of) who offer an API for directly accessing market feeds. I will therefore not be using TWS but my own plotting and trading app. Anyone have experience of this or any advice before I take the plunge?
Other than any trend lines you try to draw being unreliable as well as ridiculously limited choices for time frame, I've never had any problems as far as my actual trading goes, though I don't like how it takes a day or more after they receive your money before they actually deposit it in your account but that's a minor issue that's unlikely to come up very often.

I keep my TWS charts open as a reference, and they are useful for seeing your trade positions and stops as well as placing alerts to which you can attach trade orders, but otherwise I rely on other charting software which you already intend to do so I don't think you'll have any problems.

...but by all means, after you've had a chance to test everything out, please send in a few support tickets to fix these ongoing chart problems and visit the "suggestions" page to add stars (their version of thumbing up) to good suggestions and add your own -- though it's discouraging to see five-year-old suggestions and bug reports completely ignored.
You can always make money tomorrow provided you don't lose it today.
  • #456
  • Jun 19, 2013 8:22am Jun 19, 2013 8:22am
I have made a suggestion on IB's new features pool asking for lower Forex minimums....commissions and trade
ammount which now are 2.5$ per trade...and 25000 currency units....please vote on the link:

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en...=2493&sid=9286
ΕΣΟ ΕΤΟÎΜΟΣ
  • #457
  • Jun 19, 2013 9:17am Jun 19, 2013 9:17am
I understand that the minimum of $2,50 is large when you're only trading small size, but they cater to larger accounts and I don't think they are after small retail clients that would want to trade mini lots. Imho I don't think it's a bad thing that they target larger size. For larger size trading, their spreads combined with commissions ($20 per 1mln usd traded) is not bad at all. It's hard to find that reliable combination.
  • #458
  • Jun 19, 2013 2:04pm Jun 19, 2013 2:04pm
Quoting KADC
{quote} . ...but by all means, after you've had a chance to test everything out, please send in a few support tickets to fix these ongoing chart problems and visit the "suggestions" page to add stars (their version of thumbing up) to good suggestions and add your own -- though it's discouraging to see five-year-old suggestions and bug reports completely ignored.
Hi KADC,

Thanks for the feedback. Good to hear that the operational side of their business is, at least, functional. Yes, a day or more to clear funds is opportunistic on their part, but account funding is not something one would expect to do very often, so I can live with that.

I will access the pages you mention once my account is approved and address those issues plus my own, God forbid!

Thanks again. I will post my experiences with the IB Gateway API here.

venzen
cryptocurrency everytime
  • #459
  • Jun 19, 2013 11:59pm Jun 19, 2013 11:59pm
Quoting trader65
I have made a suggestion on IB's new features pool asking for lower Forex minimums....commissions and trade ammount which now are 2.5$ per trade...and 25000 currency units....please vote on the link: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en...=2493&sid=9286
man u you a dill? trade larger lots and it works out to be a very decent com... IB is not a place for tiny trades sizes they dont cater to the mini and micro crowd if that's you change brokers as IB wont do anything to help u.
The best indicator is price.
  • #460
  • Jun 20, 2013 9:58am Jun 20, 2013 9:58am
I think IB is very reasonable .. in my Alpari Pro account the minimum trade size is 100K, and they charge a higher commission.
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