Ok, name another broker that's better? Been looking for a backup for a while now. IB technology is the best available out there. API, breadth of products, lowest cost. Give me another broker that comes even close.
Actually net revenue from the IB brokerage business dropped only marginally. Trading gains, however, were down nearly 30% year-over-year. Meanwhile, Timber Hill exec Milan Galik has filed a trading plan to sell approximately 200,000 IBKR shares in 2012, a stake roughly the size of his annual stock grant. Milan Galik: http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ibkr/insiders?pid=9441604 Galik's annual compensation: http://people.forbes.com/profile/milan-galik/44386 Galik's trading plan filing info: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/120125/ibkr8-k.html
good point. here is another one-name one broker,who offers direct(no middle man,no BS markups) access for retail traders\investors to a corporate bond market with $5 per trade commish.
My personal favorite is ChartTrader. When I first saw it, I thought it was gimmicky. But if you are visual or do any type of support/resistance trading like fibs or pivot points, ChartTrader is a must have. The ability to look almost instantly at 1 day, 2 day, 1 week, 1 month, 6 month views to find prior support/resistance points really gives you a lot of information. After looking at Sterling DDE/ActiveX support, I grew to appreciate IB's version better. If you have a strategy that requires firing off multiple orders at once (literally hundreds), like opening orders, IB Excel app is awesome. And it's free. You can basically trade 24 hours. One time I went overboard, after trading the futures during US hours, I continue trading the Nikkei after hours from 10pm to 1am. I didn't stop there. Traded the DAX from 3am to 6am. I looked at MBTrading but it didn't come close, especially with their trading technology. About the closest I've seen is TradeStation but their rates and futures support aren't as good.
maybe you haven't noticed but as retail platforms go, TWS is one of the best. Since you think it is not a good platform, maybe most retail platforms are pure garbage. before IB was here in the small european country where I live. there were 6 brokers each offering 6x the commissions than IB, plus their platforms were like windows 98. thank god for IB. (P>S> I kid you not, some brokers charge you for holding your stock. which is a percentage of your stock value. Data fees cost is much better since it's flat fee)
no one could be so stupid as bwol. clearly he's a shill for IB, pretending to dislike them in order to get us to sing their praises. almost had me fooled. had you going too bobby.
I really dislike them, but I'm required to use them and can't get competitive brokerage fees down without working for them.
gee , you fooled me twice. first I thought you meant it , then I thought you were a shill, now you tell me you meant it again. I'm very confused, aren't you?
My complaints about TWS are unfixed bugs, terrible charting and bloat. TWS works fine for entering buy and sell orders. For actual traders IB gives basic data feeds for free and only makes you pay for certain data feeds. IB doesn't make you pay for every data feed like TradeStation does. IB gives free futures data that stock only brokers will not provide.