Thomas Peterffy, the founder of IB was on CNBC this morning and made some interesting stats on IB users: IB has 1.4 million customers, average portfolio $250,000 Less than 2% involved in meme stocks (AMC, GME, etc) Of those involved in meme stocks, longs on average have $50K in meme stocks, the shorts have twice as much.
Taking into account the 300% initial margin requirement at IBKR for shorting the memes vs 100% initial for long, one could assume that the shorters are better capitalized.
1.4mx 250k makes IB one of the largest deposit taking banks on the planet! If anyone is still wondering what IB is...
More stats: • 2.250 million Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs), 37% higher than prior year and 3% higher than prior month. • Ending client equity of $348.3 billion, 83% higher than prior year and 1% higher than prior month. • Ending client margin loan balances of $45.8 billion, 97% higher than prior year and 2% higher than prior month. • Ending client credit balances of $80.8 billion, including $2.7 billion in insured bank deposit sweeps, 15% higher than prior year and 2% lower than prior month. • 1.39 million client accounts, 65% higher than prior year and 2% higher than prior month. • 373 annualized average cleared DARTs per client account. • Average commission per cleared Commissionable Order of $2.49 including exchange, clearing and regulatory fees.