The interaction between IB and traders, on this website, is a way for IB to learn what it needs to do in order to be a better company. I don't think you can suggest any substitute method for IB to learn what it does on this website. IB's interaction, on this website, also helps educate both existing and potential IB customers as to what IB provides, and it helps existing customers to troubleshoot their problems with IB.
Well, interestingly IB who are very motivated in what they according to you, have time to come here and interact and fix problems their clients are having, BUT, if they were not wasting their time interacting through this "specific" forum may be the clients would not have trouble in the 1st place. Besides some of the thing the people have mentioned on this forum are very basic issues which do not require an interaction for superior services and actually coming here to tell us that the problems have been resolved, WOW, big achievement. The IB has fixed basic problems which should not be there on the 1st place, and real issues have been left aside.
I agree with you on your last sentence, but despite this, I don't think you can find any other broker as good as IB for the serious active trader. Your other sentences, the ones prior to your last sentence, are just totally wrong. I base this on my own extensive experience with troubleshooting actual problems at IB.
The joy of working for someone like IB must in part come from interacting with some of the tossers who come up in response to questions like this. Have a good weekend guys. Keep up the good work.
Not sure why I'm dignifying your post but right now it is 8:45 AM Saturday morning in HK. If you look at the time print on my posts, you'll find most are outside of my working hours. I don't think I'm wasting my time any more than you do when you post. Now to your question on liquidity providers. As mentioned, are liquidity providers are amongst the top banks in the world. Some of them do no wish to be actively mentioned by us and thus we will respect their wishes. As I mentioned before and I'll state again, the important thing is the spread and liquidity. We have tight spreads and the banks compete for your orders. We monitor the quality of the executions and make adjustments if necessary. If our providers were not up to snuff, I'm sure you'll hear about it on this forum. The experience of our clients, as you can read on this forum, has been good though. There were many favorable posts about how the providers didn't back away during the latest numbers release. We can't guarantee that this will always be the case but so far, feedback has been excellent.
I really don't understand why some are so critical of IB employees participating in these forums. I, for one, have found their posts to be very helpful, accurate, and honest. Their tone is generally courteous and they focus on the positives of their platform rather than the obvious negatives of many other brokers. IB is not perfect but their investment tools (in terms of performance and fees) are among the best in the world. To all IB contributors: Please keep the posts coming!
I appreciate the IB responses. While I am not an IB customer I am considering another account and will likely choose IB. I do wish other brokers would "visibly" identify themselves in this and other forums - they are probably here, we just don't recognize them?
for the record ... I have been using IB for small size FX spot USD - EUR executions recently ... from the handful I have done ... when it is not so busy in Asian hours ... I can lift the offer or hit the bid or split the 2 pip spread ... and although sometimes I have seen the contra side as a major player in the SPOT FX market , and sometimes I know my order was executed with another IB IDEALPRO FX trader .... I do not care ... who it is ... as long as my executions are quick when needed
I feel the same way. I have made particular efforts to praise IB's participation on EliteTrader, because I think it is so beneficial to everyone involved, and I don't want to let somebody who doesn't know any better discourage IB from its participation. I suspect that Eagle Eye may be so negative about IB because he is cynical and bitter about his experience with his previous FX broker, Saxo, and so he mistakenly expects more of the same from IB.