Oh you mean the countries with universal health care? lol You're from Sydney?! I thought with a statement like this your were surely from the US and suffering from exceptionalism. https://theconversation.com/us-is-b...ings-that-measure-democracy-inequality-190486
You probably know how many have built large frameworks relying on the API, so going for greener pastures is very doable for discretionary, it's probably a year or more work for the rest of us. And I fully own up to being the sucker. I just said the tech stack is relatively good, it's not without bugs and issues but it's very comprehensive. I've also not said anything bad about charting - it's slow due to Java but works well enough. How is that complaining? A complaining customer that keeps doing business is better than a quiet one that just walks. When you see quite a lot of people complaining about margins, it's a signal. Most of my time and worry is spent managing the margin and I don't even take on crazy risk these days. It's not how it should be.
This point you made on Margins is very important! Trading is an exceptionally challenging profession as it is. To have the huge distraction of frequently shifting margin requirements would not be acceptable to me. I had been curious about Interactive, but no longer. Distractions are the main cause of Death on the Battlefield for soldiers. And often for Warrior Traders, it is vital to minimize them. When I was with AMP there would be those occasional emails from Risk regarding the limiting of futures margin, and then waiting for it to be normalized, but it was nowhere near as bad as what you are describing from the Interactive Risk Department. I currently have accounts with both Tasty and Ninja. With Tasty there has never been any variation in my margin requirements, except for the occasional shift over time, both up and down just a bit, and clearly shown on their appropriate page. And with Ninja Futures, on the trading calendar are clearly marked occasional days like CPI and FOMC when temporarily the Day Trade Margins, which are quite generous there, are 4 X the standard DTM, starting 15 minutes pre-announcement. But it never has lasted more than an hour for me, and often far less than that. Trying to trade with frequently shifting margins with little or no warning, and without predetermined figures, would make me feel like I am trying to do a major overhead lift with weights via a foundation of standing upon deep, shifting and blowing sands. Good way to tear a tendon, ligament or muscle ...
It's pretty good. Though, their platform has weird bugs, which have almost led to me missing trades or enterting trades wrong. If the market crashes I'll definitely buy their stock and hold it for a decade.
Exactly. Brokers should be working with us and not against us. I was in Hong Kong and so IBKR ads all over the place, at the airport on pushcarts for example. They're really going after the randoms off the street, who probably don't know what margin is anyway and just buy any meme stock for as much as they can. So all this discussion likely falls of deaf ears.
In what world do you think brokers work with you? All you are to them is a commission. Plus, they're probably taking trades against your positions on top of it. Their only objective is limiting their risk while they pillage.
Do you use IBKR Desktop or IBKR TraderWorkStation? IBKR Desktop is genuinely the worst trading client I have ever seen in existence, IBKR TWS is infinitely customizable and what I use personally.