I just wanted to share a couple things with the few folks on here who trash talked IB recently. I just switched to IB and am very impressed so far. Have not once had my connection lost or had bad fills. The one and only order that was missed was a stop loss order that got skipped as the stock zipped by my stop. Other than that, IB is by far the best I have seen. If others have better better brokers, I'd love to see it. Point is, each broker has good points and bad points. For me, IB is the ballz! Awesome commissions and great fills. I wanted to tell the folks here who bash IB about one horror story I had with Brown and Company. You think IB is bad, listen to this one. I put in a market order to buy 3000 shares of EP @ the open. The stock had closed the night before @ 7.10/share. When it opened, I got a confirmation on my computer screen from Brown and Company saying I bought 3000 shares @ 7.10. Great. When I turned on my pc to see where the market was at, it was about 9:35. I looked at EP. It was trading at about 7.50. I decided to sell off for a quick (.40*3000-$10 total commissions) $1190 profit. So, I sold off the 3000 shares @ 7.50 and was a happy camper. So, I thought. I got a confirmation on the sale as well. So, EP ended up closing the day @ 7.30 for the day. When I got home from work, I had a message on my machine from Brown and Company to call customer support. I called them and this is what they said "we are sorry to inform you but the price we listed on your confirmation was incorrect. You actually bought EP @ 7.90/share." I was F*** ing pissed. I told the woman that I had sold the 3000 shares @ 7.50 because I thought I had bought them @ 7.10. She connected me to a broker, and he said this "EP opened @ 7.90. It had gapped up from its close of 7.10 the day before, so any moron would know that you couldn't possibly have bought the shares at such an unrealistic price of 7.10." I said "What do you mean the price of 7.10 was OBVIOUSLY a bad fill?" It closed the day before @ 7.10, so why would 7.10 be such an OBVIOUSLY erroneous price to have gotten the stock at??" He said "Well, sir we are sorry, but the best we can do is to strike your sale of the 3000 shares and give the shares back to you." I said "That is mighty kind of you, you f*** moron! I sold them @7.50/share and the stock is @ 7.30 as of the close!" If I wanted the shares back, I can go buy them myself for less than the 7.50/share! Anyways, that was it for me and Brown and Company!. Yes, the $5 commission was nice, but when you get f*** over on one trade, The $5 don't mean much! As I said, I am sure others could chime in with other horror stories of bad fills and poor service. So far, IB has been awesome to me, and I haven't needed to call tech support for any issues.
Seems the mistake Brown made was a confirmation of buying at $7.1. Of course it's not good and especially bad to customer's psychology. But even a f* moron should be able to check whether the stock indeed openned at 7.9 and if so that's true he couldn't possibly have bought at 7.1 and he made no money from it.
Strongly agree with the OP. IB is a very good broker. Not perfect, but very good IMHO. Been with a few brokers over the years and IB beats 'em all. Good trading to all, no matter what broker you have.
I concur, people have to realize that it's IB that gives us retail folks possibilities that were only available to institutional folks before. Highly competitive fees, API, trading world markets, good interest rates on cash, interest paid on shorts. A full solid package. Yet a couple kids always switch over with their 5k college savings account from eTrade and then start flame wars because "customer service is bad". Sorry, if you need somebody to hold your hands go back to eTrade.
I don't like IB. Their website is hard to navigate and their trading software is harder to understand than their website. Their customer service gets a big fat ZERO from me on a scale from 1 to 10.
Absolutely. If there was another broker that could match the whole package, I'm sure many people would like to know about it. The reality is that there isn't. Sure they don't do for example, CFDs so if that's what is required then go somewhere else. But for most retail traders they have a lot to offer. Anybody that finds their web site difficult to understand really should do a bit of study.
To the a$$hole who was calling me a liar: I was at work when the EP incident happened. Perhaps I wasn't clear about exactly what happened- My pc was "ON" since 7:30 am when I got into work. My pc has a screensaver, so it 'shuts off' if no activity after a few minutes. I put my market order in well before the market opened. I was out on the shop floor doing some work and returned to my desk at about 9:35 to see what the market was doing and that is when I moved my mouse and my monitor turned back on from its powersaver mode. So, to the F*** a*hole who called me a liar, go F*** yourself. As far as the confirmation goes, should I assume that NO confirmation is really confirmed unless they deem it to be at some later time? As far as I know, Brown and Company's order flow was through their market maker and he had the shares @ 7.10. So what would have happened if the stock gapped down and I got filled at 7.10, would I then go back and say "hey how did you fill my order at 7.10, the stock gapped down to 6.30?" Point is Brown and Company gave me a bogus confirmation and tried to back out of it to the tune of about $2500. A confirmation is a confirmation. Whether it was a market order or not. Also, I use market orders all the time and will today as well. The reason is that I want to be filled at that time. I realize that some scummy brokerage houses will use market orders to f*** you over as much as possible, so far IB has been very good to me.