If you are going to hold for years a purchase fee of £10 is much cheaper than a monthly inactivity fee of $10 (£6.66) and data fee of $10 (£6.66). IB is good for traders and not good for investors.
you would like to trade in USD but not have the currency risk? lol you are not in mamas land where you can wish whatever you like. you can open also 2 accounts, one in GBP and another in USD. or you can buy USD on the FOREX frontend so you dont have to pay interest on you USD loan (for the margin for the ETF) but remember: IB pays you also interest (accounts bigger then 10.000USD)
Hi guys, I had a thought about all this and believe you're right, due to various fee, IB is more suitable to Active investors than buy and hold investors. I am now considering the broker lightspeed, the account will be hold in USD and will cover the currency risk with another forex broker. The commission at lightspeed seems pretty good: $0.395 per 100 shares and if I used the web trader (the web based trading platform), there are no other fee, like market data or routing. It sounds good, however they to pay interest on the account balance I believe. What do you think of this broker?