I'm considering opening up an individual retail account with interactive brokers. What's I'd like to know is what fees to expect, because after browsing the information on the site and reading a few threads by users a few things are unclear. The one fee I understand with certainty is that you must spend at least $10 a month on trades or you will be charged the difference. However, one user says you are required to sign up for data services and these can be quite expensive. Is this accurate, that signing up for data services is a requirement? I have also read there is a $10 commission for real time quotes each month. But is signing up for real times quotes required, or can I just skip this, if I already get real time quotes elsewhere? Are there any other fees I am missing or may have overlooked? I am trying to get a sense of what my real monthly costs would be if I had an IB account, and if it is possible to pass on the real time quotes and data services altogether in order to keep costs down. Thank you.
Basic real time quote data is free. The $10.00 inactivity fee is easily avoided by placing a few trades with a total commission of $10.00. No other hidden fees or mandatory paid services.
There are a number of waivers for the minimum monthly charge, even if you don't trade much. Yes, you can trade without paying them for data, and get your quotes elsewhere.
Actually, I think it's $10 fee, but waived if $30 total commission. That can be avoided by turning off the real-time quotes. One can easily get real-time quotes from someplace else. I actually have two accounts. One with no money in it that I use for real time quotes and CNBC and IB which I use to place all my trades.
You don't have to go elsewhere for quotes ----- Interactive Brokers free live quote package covers a lot of markets.
What free live quote package are you referring to? There are free delayed quotes and free live quotes on some securities, but I don't know of a free live quote package for stocks / ETFs.
IB provides free live quotes for: US markets (stocks, ETF's, and options). Canadian markets. Japanese markets. Futures. And I'm sure a lot more than the above list. All available through their browser based trading platform.
OptionGuru giving some terrible advice here. Live feed for stocks is not free - you only get BATS real-time for free but they are only a small part of the market, for correct quotes you pay $1.50 for NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX each. US futures are anything from $2.50 to $125 per month. And no, you don't need to subscribe to anything at all, trading permissions are not connected to real-time quotes.