IB - Friends & Family, Advisor Accounts

Discussion in 'Interactive Brokers' started by DisciplinedHedg, Mar 2, 2010.

  1. Does anyone here manage over 15 accounts with IB's Friends & Family Advisor account? And has contemplated moving to another discount broker?

    Are there any other discount futures brokers out there that offer an advisor/client account program similar to IB's Friends & Family?
     
  2. olias

    olias

    If you have more than 15 accounts, you can't operate under the Friends and Family plan any more. You'd have to register as a CTA. That's not an IB rule, that's an industry regulation.

    I hope this info helps.
     
  3. Once you reach 15, you can go under IB's Account Management and just put in your NFA registration # and continue with business as usual.

    As I understand it, a Friends & Family account is simply an Advisor account. And once you put in an NFA or RIA #, it becomes a Professional Advisor account.

    Any other similar futures brokerages out there that offer the same thing?
     
  4. moo

    moo

    How does this F&F account work? What do I need to do if I want to manage money for my friends at IB, and is there a lot of extra bureaucracy or costs?
     
  5. moo

    moo

    Didn't find anything too informative there.
     
  6. There are no additional costs for being in a Friends and Family account structure. It is actually a cost saver if the structure fits your trading needs.

    1. Sub account volumes are pooled together for the purpose of reaching tiers in our commission schedules.
    2. If you have one very active account (your regular trading account), the commissions generated can be applied to a less frequently used account (maybe your IRA) so no accounts are charged a minimum fee.
    3. You only pay market data once. Again here, commissions generated for all the accounts go towards the $30.00 required for the US non pro bundle of data.
    4. If you buy 200 shares (100 for the individual account, 100 for the IRA) each account is charged $.50. If they were separate, each account would be charged 1.00

    Some of our most advanced trading software is implemented in the advisor account. For example, if you get multiple prices on a single order that you have allocated to multiple accounts, IB will give each account an average price so the first account that receives an execution doesn't get a better price than the last one.

    If you need more information, you should look on our web site or give us a call.

    Sal
     
  7. moo

    moo

    Thank you for the info, that sounds good.

    So I can use a single TWS for trading on multiple accounts?
    Is this TWS much heavier than a single-account TWS?
    Is there any demo/tutorial on your website as to how this works in practice?
    And where exactly on the website do you have more info?
     
  8. Demo -

    http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/pagemap/pagemap_demo.php

    You need to look for this line on the middle left of the screen,

    For Advisor or Portfolio Margin demos, click here.

    Here is a link to video tours we provide of special software,

    http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/twsTutorial.php

    Go to the the Advisor Tour, click view tour, and you'll watch a 20 minute mini movie of someone trading with a Advisor TWS. You can see everything down to the mouse moving and clicking on features. I would take the tour before jumping into the demo.

    To answer your question 'is it heavier', I'm going to make the assumption you mean, will it consume more CPU from my PC or slow it down. The answer is no. The allocation and advanced price averaging software is on our servers. You are still just delivering a message to us with only a minimal amount of additional information. The messages you receive back (cancels, executions, etc) are the same as an individual account.

    If I misunderstood any part of your question, please don't hesitate to clarify and ask again.

    Sal
     
  9. Do you care if the broker is in the US?
     
    #10     Mar 4, 2010