I've been with IB for years and years, and in general think they are great. Their commissions always seemed super low for me. But are there other brokers out there that have lower commissions, or charge less for shorting/margin? This would be for stocks/futures/options. Seems I've seen a few complaints about them here on the forum, and some mention of maybe other brokers having less commissions/fees on certain items. Thanks!
one thing to consider if you trade stocks.. Merrill Edge has 100 commission free trades per month if you have balance over 50k.. that beats IB and most every other broker.. not ideal for day trading but it works good and ive gotten good execution
If you trade Futures, I kindly invite you to examine our site www.optimusfutures.com Depending on your setups, and the software you need, we will recommend the right setup while keeping the cost low, provide exchange-traded margins, and give a few options of FCMs.
You should never, ever, have just one broker. Diversification is a necessity of survival. Related to the concept of all your eggs in one basket. It is easier to deal with just one broker until it isn't.
I haven't seen many people offering better margin rates than IB out there. You can get free stock trades from some of the startups like Robinhood, but I'll take IBs execution over theirs any day, and you might even earn a net rebate from time to time.
Multiple alternatives have been mentioned in other threads. But most don't seem to offer an "integrated account" which lets you trade stocks, options and futures from one account. You would need multiple accounts at these brokers. I am not sure whether this would be an important factor to you.
Not this question again No retail alternatives in terms of cost, back end capability, and product offerings.
The issue is not "one" broker, instead, have multiple connections. We can place customers on various connections. For example, you can have two accounts via the same FCM for the same platform.