Today I put in an order for 5000 shares of a penny stock, at around ~$2.00 per share. I don't often have orders with such a large amount of shares, so I went to my daily statement to see how much I was charged for this buy..... .... $25.00! Wow! This will be a $50 round trip! I thought I was with one of the cheapest brokers in the industry. Is there no cap on the maximum amount an order can be? What if I decide I want 100,000 shares of a stock that goes for .10 cents a share. Is IB going to charge me 500 dollars? Please tell me I don't have to open a scottrade account so that I can 2000 shares without getting ripped off.
IB commissions on US securities are capped at 0.5% of trade value, plus exchange fees. This information is available on IB's website, but perhaps you were absent the day they taught percentages in grade school. So I did the calculations for you, as to the example you cited, and your commissions would be capped at $50, plus exchange fees, not the $500 you calculated. http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/commission.php?ib_entity=llc
Thanks for your help, even though you're being an asshole. I was asking about a finite order cap, such as never going above 19.95 per trade. Obviously they don't have it. Which sucks, because now I have to open a scottrade account for orders like this. What if I make 4 roundtrip trades like I did yesterday? I could easily do it, and it would cost 200 dollars! At scottrade, it would cost 7x8= 56 dollars. I'm sorry, but that is a big difference, and something I can't just ignore.
Echange fees can be as high as .003 per share or $300 for 100k. Traders may have been taking advantage of the fee cap.(making 1-3 tenth of a cent gross, making the broker the net loser)..I think it is why they raised fees. Although there have been a ton of changes recently to ecn fees and structures for sub dollar stocks. IB makes alot of money on their bundled pricing side. For a trader who is bidding 1000 shares IB would recieve a credit of up to .0025 depending on the exchange and charge you .005. On the flip side, their unbundled pricing can be very cost effective, One of the best in the imo. Choose a broker that fits your strategy.
On stocks, $2.00 or less, IB recently had a price increase on these. So, if your stock's pps was over $2, you would probably have paid less.
Yep, if you want to trade 2000+ shares / trade, you need to open an account at a flat-rate brokerage, not per-share.
You irresponsibly suggested that IB would charge $500 in commission, in a situation where those commissions would actually have been capped at $50 plus exchange fees. You didn't even bother to check IB's commissions page, before you spread wrong information harmful to IB's business, and by extension, to its customers. And your calling me an asshole?
Seeing you've lowered the conversation to this level, let me tell you that you, sir, are a moron. And an idiot. Wrong. Sensationalist. Stupid. Another halfwitted thread claiming ib are bad bad bad. Is there no limit to the number of wankers available to start these threads?