After nine years, I think I have had enough. Love the price, but can't take the lack of customer service. (I won't bore you with my latest misadventure.) Need options and futures and futures on options, in addition to stocks. Overseas exchanges would be nice, but I can give that up. Obviously as a soon to be former IB account holder, I am price-conscious, but not looking for non-name, fly-by-nighters, either.
It is not easy to get many viable IB alternatives--but certainly not impossible to get. If you get a chance, could you elaborate what prompted you to leave a broker after 9 years?
I tried to do a couple easy things, like change my mailing address online, and the website couldn't do it, and I have spent now 16 days e-mailing, filing out help tickets and making phone calls ... to no avail. Stuff like that. I could site other more -money-affecting things, but sometimes it's the little things that count.
Tradestation will be your obvious choice and it has identical future's prices to IB only 10 folds better platform and services!
As far as I know, cash balance doesn't earn interest in TradeStation account. Buy T bill to earn interest?
I've traded stocks and futures for years, but while it's nice to have those accounts at the same place, I always got better service from separate firms. Futures firms do a better job servicing futures traders and stock firms do a better job with stock traders. Just my experience, but find a good firm for each.
I would like to drop IB too, not because of the price but their practices. IB uses dirty tricks to force me to subscribe something which I don't want! How can one stay with a broker which will hurt us for their own benefits? I feel uneasy with IB now.