SWB, I did not object to the cap. I was disappointed, but had no choice in the matter than to accept. Due to the unusual nature of them refusing or themselves being unable to remove the cap, I still have the chat protocol. On 4/10/2017, I tried to buy some W7L@LSE. Most of the trading volume regarding those AIM stocks is done outside the exchange/ OTC; IB only offers the direct exchange access. There is no continuous trading, only a couple of auctions a day. To make matters worse, market maker bids and asks are indicative only i.e. they may not be honoured. The price was rising steadily at the time (due to continuous trades happening off exchange, but still being displayed in TWS "last" column). Bid was 180, Ask 185. I decided to place a buy order limit 188 to increase the likelihood to get an execution, but was capped at 185. Market maker did not honour the ask, there were no further orders for this auction, and thus no trade. I had to wait for the next auction one hour, and then 2 hours later during which the price continued to rise elsewhere. On that day, I chatted with IB twice, once with a HK rep (that was early morning) and then Zug, Switzerland. They both independently of each other told me they could not remove the cap, but they understood my frustration and that IB management was discussing these caps.
Simple question. Why are you trading wide, nutty stocks that are hard to trade on the platform you're using. And it seems strange the cap would be the ASK. Is that standard for this exchange?
You are right, IB is certainly not the place for short term and frequent trading of AIM stocks, given their limited access. The price cap issue is just a compounding factor. With a longer expected holding period however, and if those stocks are a small and infrequent occurrence in your account, it does not makes sense to open and maintain a local account for that. It makes sense to keep everything under one roof, and enjoy the benefits of IB’s Universal Account (comprehensive performance measurement, in a single currency, for example). I don’t know. The Swiss rep said that it’s capped at 2.5% from the reference rate, at that point 182.5, the „last exchange traded price“. But that would have been 187. Maybe he meant 1.5%.. BTW, looking at the chat transcript, I have to amend one of my earlier statements. He said „I have tried again (to remove the cap), but it was declined“. So they have not been unwilling, just unable to remove the cap themselves.
Will be great if IB offered international currency cards with foreign currency debit reflected in the portfolio, so you can take advantage of the forex rate with low spreads. Will be better than bank forex rates with huge spreads + a bank cut when using your normal visa in an international area. However, if you use this IB card as a debit, it's not a win for people who have cashback cards. If you have a cashback card, it's still better to charge on normal credit card, get the 2% or whatever cash back. And then periodically transfer money from trading account to settle the CC debt, than to do "direct debit" off an IB account with no cashback. You still get more gains via cashback cards.