The new market data interface has been on line today. It worked as expected, i.e. it eliminated the delays.
IB goes down everyday in canada, and has cost me $$$, i emailed them and they told me my orders were going through but the level 1 screen was delayed..........hmmmm that's funny if my order went through and the price went through my level where are my shares??? so i ended up having to use a market order which for some reason does always go through even when the limit orders do not and get a price i do not want, but have to take or else lose even more money. they are terrible and unreliable. i want to find a better canadian discount broker - looking at e*trade canada, which i have also heard bad things about, and also dejardins - which i can't find any reviews of. any suggestions?? but stay away from IB for TSX!!!!
Your experience sounds consistent with the market-data feed being delayed. This issue had been confirmed in this thread and rectified on 4/13 as stated in my previous post.
i will let you know if it is fixed but on thursday april 13 i had the same problem where my limit order did not show up on the level 1 screen so when i put in my market order it went through right away. this does not sound like a delay to me it sounds like limit orders are not going through and market orders are - when you are buy 3000 shares and have a .20 spread this is very expensive. ***prospective clients i would wait and see if it is really fixed****, there are more reliable discount brokers out there right now. i will post again when i stop having these problems to be fair to IB, although it wont get back my 2k or so i have lost since setting up my account 2 weeks ago, i am still up 4k in that time but it should be 6k. also make sure you check out their overnight margin rules as well, i have read about and experienced them selling shares 10 minutes before close - which is fine i just wish there would be some warning so i can get the best price before they do it with no warning and sell at market. craig
craig03, I think you are out of line here. This is your second post in this forum and you are already addressing the "prospective clients" and telling them about the "more reliable discount brokers out there". I trust that you had contacted our helpdesk about your problem w/ equal enthusiasm. If you PM me your ticket number, I'll have someone follow it up on Monday. If you did not and you'll PM me an example order number with which you noticed difficulties, I'll still have some follow up on Monday.
Here's a question about executing order and potential ways to offset pitfalls. 1) Assuming the level 2 is not updating to show your order placed, how much does it cost to actually call in and place your order through an agent...i.e. like Ameritrade and Questrade offer. I remember seeing something about $40.00 dollars in addition to the $0.01 per share, but did not know for sure. At least this way, one can call in the order and cancel the impending one if it has not been executed. 2) And aslo, if someone were to do that, how much would it cost to cancel the original order?
Craig03, I disagree with your claim that you were liquidated for margin violations, without warning. I believe you were warned about IB's margin policies when you signed your account agreement and its various attachments, but that perhaps you made the mistake of failing to read what you had signed, and so, you were unaware of the warnings. I believe you should also have read about IB's margin policies in greater detail, on other appropriate parts of its website, before you made your first trade. I don't think it is fair for you to blame IB for your own failure to study IB's margin policies prior to trading.
I'm of two minds regarding this thread. While it is certainly useful to read about positive and negative aspects of brokers, I have to say that I generally don't place much value on posts by new members that immediately proceed to be highly critical of IB.
so far... I have had an excellent experience trading CDN stocks with IB, no real problems here. BTW IB SOFT... I love the innovation over the last year... charts, alerts etc and the lowering of the CDN commission, great job and please keep it up.
The quotes have been delayed some days. Do you understand what a market order is? It will execute automatically at the best price available. So if the best offer on the book is 20 cents higher than the last price traded, this is the price you will get.