I myself always wondered how IB could afford to provide streaming real time quotes and the insanely low commissions that they do to its retail customers without charging anything extra. For those with IRA's I can understand the concern about the new fee. But for anyone who is a regular trader, I don't see the reason to get worked up. If you're not making enough profits monthly to dwarf a $10 charge, then you might be in the wrong business. Also, while IB's $79 cost for Level II is absurd, it's a feature mainly geared toward active traders, who should probably be subscribing to an external data feed/charting package anyway and not using IB's level II. I think the knee jerk reaction to get upset over the $10/mo. is simply because we IB customers have had it so good for so long. However whatever shortcomings IB may be perceived as having ($10/mo., no interest etc) are more than balanced out by their commissions, and I'm sure that if you calculate the savings in commissions over just about any other retail broker, you'll find that it more than makes up for these things.
Who really cares about a $10 charge for quotes. If you don't even make $30 worth of trades a month, you should move your account elsewhere and just get interest on your first 10k. What I'm concerned is that I have an IRA with 15k which I have sitting in cash because of current market conditions. I hope IB links the accounts and sees that I generate plently of commission for them in my main trading account and doesn't charge me for both. It would be wrong to pay commission for each account you have. I'm already losing 20k of interest for having two accounts.
The $30 commission amount for the $10 fee to be waived applies only to equities and equity options. There is no waiver for futures. I think there should be one. You stock traders don't take this into account. Who cares about $10 ? Well if you trade stocks actively you certainly generate $30 in commissions but if you trade the eminis, the mini Dow and you keep a less active stock account, then that makes 50 bucks per month in exchange fee. It's just ridiculous. Also you can't place orders quickly without RT quotes so an entry order platform without RT quotes is worthless for most traders.
I just recieved a reply from IB's help desk about the fees. The message was pretty much a verbatim cut-and-paste of the original notice put out by IB regarding the charges. The charges will be on a per-account basis. Looks like I'll be moving my IRA away from IB. Let's see here...IB was making $200 a year from my IRA account due to keeping interest on the first $10K of cash I have on account. They thought they could squeeze me for an extra $10 bucks a month, or $120 bucks a year. Now instead, they get nothing. Doesn't seem to make good business sense to me. -- Punter
Punter - let's wait for def to get back to us. There may be some changes coming that IB help desk doesn't know about yet.
Kicking - "The $30 commission amount for the $10 fee to be waived applies only to equities and equity options. There is no waiver for futures. I think there should be one. You stock traders don't take this into account. Who cares about $10 ? Well if you trade stocks actively you certainly generate $30 in commissions but if you trade the eminis, the mini Dow and you keep a less active stock account, then that makes 50 bucks per month in exchange fee. It's just ridiculous. Also you can't place orders quickly without RT quotes so an entry order platform without RT quotes is worthless for most traders." --- Total agreement. Why is there no waiver offered for futures accounts? As an Emini futures trader, it means paying the CME twice for the same data and I don't think I can run my charts off the IB feed. Now how does that make any sense?
Right on Kicking and Hrr. IB is just exacerbating an old problem: we can't make use of their data in charts, and now they want to charge for it. It's also ironic that the latest technical problem they had was with their quotes being delayed, making the system unusable. As consumers of a service, it's not our job to be apologists for IB. We are interested in reducing trading costs, including any fixed monthly costs. Whether it's $10, $50, or $100, the service provider better have a darn good reason for taking more money out of my pocket (and to do it in a fair and sensible way), or they deserve to get an ear full... (BTW, none of this is directed towards Def, who seems to often be stuck dealing with a lot of stuff he has little control over.)
After re-reading the IB communique, I got the impression that at any time you may login to your account and change your exchange subscription. So if you have an IRA or other account that you don't think or don't know if you'll be trading in a particular month, you could change your subscription settings and not be charged for that month. Of course, if you do want to trade even once in the month and resubscribe you'd be charged the full monthly fee. Again, this is my interpretation of the statement, and I could be wrong. Anyone who can confirm or deny this feel free.
my two cents.. IB is upgrading their services.. they previously did not have multi currency accounts, now they do.. they didnt have level II, now they do.. they didnt offer combined stock and futures accounts, soon they will.. considering all of the good things about IB (including the HUGE commission/ecn fee savings), i dont think 10 dollars a month is an unreasonable amount for them to ask us to pay should our account be inactive for the month.. -qwik
ok: here's some info I got overnight: 1. IB has to pay the fees and it has reached a point where it needs to pass them on. 2. you will be charged just for the months you use the data. you can subscribe and unsubcribe from one month to the next. thus for inactive IRA accounts, just unsubscribe. 3. you can try contacting your other data provider and request that you not be charged since you are paying them via your broker. 4. i did not get a reply from a definitive source on whether multiple accounts will be charged. 5. i am still waiting to here if you do not have to subscribe to trade.