Okay, so I finally went to sign up for an IB account yesterday, ran through most of the application, and encountered an age limit error. You have to be 21 in order to sign up with them? Ridiculous ... Anyone know of a way around this? I shot their support department an e-mail yesterday mid-afternoon, but have not heard back from them as of yet. I am hoping they will make an exception for someone moving to them from a different broker .... If not IB (although I've heard good things about them ..) what are some other brokers I should consider? I would like to keep the price low ($10/month fee is doable), but I would really like a broker that has a decent set of available services, as I'll be getting into options and future trading eventually. EDIT: I am currently a Scottrade customers.
You can open a cash account. Must be 21 or older to open a margin account. Must be 18 or older to open a cash account. This is under Accounts, New Accounts, Individuals, then Account Information, on the main page.
Hmmm, that would explain it, thanks. Do most other brokers have this same policy? EDIT: Would have been convenient if they mentioned something about the margin account in the error message. IIRC, they didn't.
They might, I'm not sure. You could check with MB Trading maybe. I think they have a pretty good product offering.