IB: is it really good???

I see on this forum employees of IB actively promoting themselves. I also see few people being a customers of IB also favoring them.

Well here is what struck me about IB.
1st I hear on this forum that some major players are liquidity providers for IB, and that members can see little window on TWS with their names as where order is routed. However, I cannot find their names been officially displayed on IB's website( at least I could not find them).

2nd. More importantly the names of the liquidity providers are not in the terms and conditions.

3rd. Moreover, this is the actual wording of the terms:

"IB cannot and does not warrant or guarantee that every Customer order will be executed at the best posted price".

This suggests that if there is best price then IB will not guarantee that you will get it.

So there is a chance for those pro IB lovers to drop their views

 

I just discovered something more, since the IB does not guarantee best price and they have statement providing:

"Trades executed greater than 3% away from the Fair Market Value at the time of the execution will be considered for cancellation or price adjustment.
Trades executed greater than ½% away from the Fair Market Value at the time of the execution may be considered for cancellation or price adjustment.
Trades executed less than ½% away from prevailing prices are not usually considered for cancellation".

All this combined makes some interesting points.

Lets here from IB customers or employees

 

1) Indeed, currently IB users we have access to 4 MAJOR liquidity providers and 1 smaller one. We are currently interfacing with another MAJOR one.

On top of that, IB users can trade with each other at or in between the liquidity providers quotes.

2) Why should they be disclosed?

3) I don't know which part of the agreement you copied that statement from. Hence I don't see the context and as a result I can only give you my best guess as to what it means:

In general, no broker can guarantee you that they will in all cases obtain you the best displayed price. All they can do is to attempt to get it for you by utilizing the most up-to-date datafeeds and fastest order routers.
Even in case of IB FOREX, we display the best one of the quotes that the liquidity providers send us, we route your order to them, but it is they who have to execute it (just like when we send a stock order to an ECN). It may happen that by that time they receive the order their quote has already changed.

I don't see why based on this "the IB lovers should drop their views". I do believe though that our, ECN-like, model is superior to what other brokers are doing. While I would not expect you to just believe me, I do recommend that you open an account and see for yourself.

 

Sounds interesting... but,
why should you disclose the liquidity providers?
Why shouldn't you? All other ECNs do check their sites. If you claim they are liquidity providers then why not expressly state so in legally binding document i.e terms and conditions.

You don't know which part of the terms, term 5 (order routing)para B very 1st sentence.

IB lovers should not drop their views but they deserve to be notified better don't they really?

 

If IB was <i><b>really</b></i> good they'd PREDICT the next price and buy for me if it is going to be higher, and short for me if it's going to be lower. Ideally this would be implemented via the API:

method PredictNextPrice()

SSB

 

The price isn't bad.

As long as you're not looking for good (or nice) customer service they're ok.

 

I found where you are copying it from. So let me copy and paste the whole paragraph:

B. IB cannot and does not warrant or guarantee that every Customer order will be executed at the best posted price. Among other things, IB may not have access to every market at which a particular product may trade; other orders may trade ahead of Customer's order and exhaust available volume at a posted price; exchanges or market makers may fail to honor their posted prices; exchanges may re-route customer orders out of automated execution systems for manual handling (in which case execution or representation of Customer's order may be substantially delayed); or exchange rules, policies, procedures or decisions or system delays or failures may prevent Customer's order from being executed, may cause a delay in the execution of Customer's order or may cause Customer's order not to be executed at the best price.

I think it is pretty well explained why no quarantee.

The new paragraph you just added, I don't know where it is from, but it seems to cover what trades the exchanges normally consider for busting.

 

I forgot to mention, if you say broker can attempt to get me best displayed price, then purhaps" words does not guarantee or warnts" could be replaced by "IB will attemp to get best possible price as far as reasonably possible".

what do u say...

 

I say that you really seem to like the smileys, but seriously:

The language of the agreements is prepared by our legal counsel and I am not qualified to discuss with you whether or not the wording should be different.

If you find our customer agreement objectionable, then perhaps you could email the management or maybe just not open an account. However, if you do pick the later, you will never find out how good IB really is.

Now, while I enjoyed our little conversation, I do not intend to carry it any further.

With respect,

IBsoft