And I look at SPY. It says the fee rate is .25%, I take it annually. But the rebate rate is 1.08%? Does that mean one would get 1.08% to let someone short their stock, but the person that shorts it would only have to pay .25% annually? That really does not make sense to me...
Because the people who get payed to lend out their stock or contracts, have to own it, ie they can't do it if they hold the security on the margin side of their account. When people short a security, they use margin, so IB which charges about 3% gets to bag the difference (3% - 1.08%) + .25%. Do that with billions of dollars system-wide.... money for nothin', chicks for free. Here's that link you wanted btw... https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=14527
Some of you are talking about the margin required to trade equities/options or futures/options and some are talking about credit/debit interest rate spreads.
Possibly, but we are all talking about the same 2.63% charged when borrowing $1m from IB Pro: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1595 We can start by comparing apples to apples...
Like @Robert Morse said, some of us are talking about futures margins and day trading margins and some are talking about equities lending/borrowing. Cannon does not offer equities, only futures, options on futures and forex. been doing so since 1988. Day trading margins for day trading the ES, NQ, YM and many others are $500 per contract! We use SPAN margins for option sellers. Crude oil, gold are $1000 day-trading. Here is the full list.