If my IRA acct is going to be charged $10 a month (even though I generate hundreds of dollars of commissions for IB in my main trading account), I will be moving my IRA out of IB. It is probably better to have your Retirement account with a different broker/clearing firm anyway to manage your risk. If IB went belly up (God forbid) you might get screwed.
NYSE 1 dollar NASDAQ 1 dollar AMEX 1 dollar Options 1 dollar 4 dollars for exchange fees and 6 dollars for IB. The 10 dollars is a kind of inactive accounts fee. Don't you think so?
Kickin, Def, for me order entry without quotes would do. e.g. i have always a market oder ready (e-mini's) which i transmit when i see a nice bid/offer in my charts/quotes software when i play for momentum on a 5-10min base. 10$ per month (cme) would be ok, but 30$+30$ for eurex/ace would be too much (in fact i am paying 10$+10$+2x30$+2x30$. grrr. you can buy a nice new PC for that cash over a year.) Delayed quotes would simplify order entry a bit but i cannot guess if IB will implement such a thing. It would probably require a larger bit of programming.
ajax_g, You are right. IB is trying to charge a defacto monthly fee just to maintain an account, this is absolutely sickening. As for the exchanges and their affiliates, they have been fleecing individual investors for decades all the while pretending to protect them. I think it's time for these fees to disappear in the case of the stock exchanges and go down drastically in the case of the futures markets.
Are you people for real? If you can't afford $10 bucks a month because you didn't generate $30 bucks a month in commission then move your account. Do you think IB is a charity?? I mean reeeally. Flame away
Much ado about relatively little (I don't like it either, but Cyber jacked up their monthly fee from 100 to 200 awhile back, for those that dont trade much). I suspect that much lower interest rates may be behind this, as IB's rake on the 10k they stiff us on has been cut in half at least. On the bright side, you're losing that much less in interest if your account is >10k
kicking, i don't think the idea is to make money off the exchange fees. For example, the HK futures exchange does not charge a fee for trading accounts and thus there is no fee. Nevertheless, IB is one if not the only retail firm that is not passing on ECN fees. The savings on the ECN fees alone (for those that trade NASDAQ) for active traders should more than cover the exchange fees. Wouldn't you rather have an exchange fee - which goes away if you do a relatively small amount of trading per month (you could look at it as 3 trades at some other firms) - than to have to pay ECN pass through fees or have a higher commission? also, what is wrong with an inactive account fee if the fee benefits the most desired customers? I have to pay fees at my banks if my balance goes below a certain level - this includes fidelity which charges different commissions based on the balance in the account. I'm just trying to see both sides of the story here. There are a number of remaining questions that you guys brought up that need to be clarified before you go ahead and get too uptight over this. one more thing to just to show how unfair certain things are, on the prop side in our Asian offices we pay for exchange fees to reuters, bloomberg, two other local services and the exchanges themselves. The worst part is that we (timber hill) are often the ones making the market and thus in essence we are paying the exchanges for the right to read our own quotes. exchanges do realize the benefits of releasing quotes for free to the public. however it is a HUGE cash cow that they depend on for a sizeable portion of their profits. The argument could be made that free quotes would lead to more trading and thus more income to the exchanges but good luck getting someone to stake their job on it.
>Are you people for real? If you can't afford >$10 bucks a month because you didn't generate >$30 bucks a month in commission then move >your account. Do you think IB is a charity?? I'm with Cndtrader here. If this breaks the bank then move along little doggie. Accounts cost money to maintain -- if those accounts aren't generating commissions of $30 then pay up or leave so IB can continue saving me a TON on commissions. JB
It seems that if I choose NOT to subscribe to any exchange, I will not be charged any fee. Is that correct, Def?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ by def: "Nevertheless, IB is one if not the only retail firm that is not passing on ECN fees. The savings on the ECN fees alone (for those that trade NASDAQ) for active traders should more than cover the exchange fees. Wouldn't you rather have an exchange fee - which goes away if you do a relatively small amount of trading per month (you could look at it as 3 trades at some other firms) - than to have to pay ECN pass through fees or have a higher commission?" "also, what is wrong with an inactive account fee if the fee benefits the most desired customers?" "I'm just trying to see both sides of the story here. There are a number of remaining questions that you guys brought up that need to be clarified before you go ahead and get too uptight over this." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Agreed def. You bring up very valid points. Under no condition do we want the IB commission structure touched. I look forward to upcoming clarification on some of the issues raised (e.g. a) opting out of quotes and using TWS to trade only b) not even charging such fees to long term IRA accounts c) combining IB quotes with QuoteTracker <== I'd love to pay for that d) applying an inactivity fee is fair IMO - but not for IRAs) and hope it results in some middle ground being reached acceptable to most. The easiest solution is a) flexibility to opt out of quotes - as IB is not incurring the cost and trader is not assessed the fee. Makes a lot of sense for those who obtain the quotes elsewhere or who just want to use IB TWS as a trading platform. The people who want it pay for it.