I am trading futures with IB now and generated more than $30 commission. The question I have is, if I transfer my IRA account to IB, do I need to fulfill the $30 minimum in commission in order to avoid the fee?
I believe the answer is yes based on my understanding, but I don't have multiple accounts to speak from experience.
I believe the minimum fee ($10 as I recall) is per login. It is possible (but not generally known) to have more than one login per account. IB does not credit trades for one login against the minimum fee for another.
But this is distinct from having multiple usernames per user. So if you have only one user on an account with two user names, it's a single minimum.
By "multiple logins", I mean multiple user names for the same account. Obviously there will be at least one login for each account. I have two accounts, but I have not [yet] tried a second login for either. It is my understanding that each additional login is subject to the $10 minimum which you can avoid by doing at least $30 in commissions with each login.
I believe this is not correct. I have 2 logins (but same user, me). I don't discriminate which login I use to trade (well, office vs home) but frequently one of them (the office one as I work from home mostly) does not meet the $30.
It looks to me as though you want to have a tax protected account and a taxable account with IB. One way to do it is with an Advisor account. Take a look at this thread: I have a post in it about fees that you can adjust to yiour situation. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1637128#post1637128 Jack
O.K., I am happy to go with your understanding. IB should have the last word anyway. It's nice to know I can have a second login without paying extra.
You do get charged if you want to create a login for, say, your financial planner. (And that login would need to pay its own data fees if data were desired.) That's what I misinterpretted your original post to mean.