Effective May 1st, US stock orders will have their commissions capped at 1% of the trade value, rather than the previous 0.5%. This effectively doubles the commission charge on most penny stocks, and applies regardless of Tiered vs Fixed commission schedule.
Sensible. They're moving upmarket, focusing on institutional clients. Trying to wipe the mud off their shoes.
So basically the change impacts all stocks priced from $0.35 - $0.70, which used to be capped, but now will not, and all stocks < $0.35, for which will commissions doubled. Did IB announce this change anywhere? Are there any other policy or pricing changes you know of?
Yes, that's right. It's updated on the commission page (although some of the footnotes still reference the old 0.5% cap). I think accounts with any penny stock trades that would be effected got an email/alert from IB. As for other recent changes, they have gotten a lot more strict about accepting incoming position transfers of any microcap stocks. I forget exactly what they're using as their definition (smaller than a few $100M?), but now you need something like $5M in assets at IB for them even consider your request. They have to go through a compliance review to make sure the shares are registered and legally acquired, and I guess that was getting too risky to do for all but their biggest clients. https://ibkr.info/article/2892 You can still trade most of these, just not move them in. There is a lot of stock fraud or effects by sketchy people to sell unregistered shares, and most brokerages I know have gotten stricter on the compliance side in this area.