I notice IB charges about 5 different fees such as Gateway Fee, Activity Fee, Execution Fee, Clearance Fee, SEC fee . these fees also seem pretty high. Please tell me how IB charges these fees (they charge them by trade, by day, quarterly????... Thanks
Details at their website. If you make about 10-14 trades a month they have what I found to be the cheapest rates going. At least as of mid 2008. Sorry I have no need to research further as I'm satisfied with IB and free Ninja. Although for futures you can likely do better on price, high fees and IB don't seem to belong in the same sentence.
Although I can do a bit better than IB on futures commissions, I can sure sleep better with my money in an IB account than in the account of most futures brokers. The security and protection of client funds is most important for me.