In my opinion there are only 2 reasons why anyone should even consider trading with IB over other brokers 1) what interest IB pays on idle cash - if you are a trader who typically has a large amount of cash in your trading account but for the most part you only use a small portion of it day in and day out and you only want the large amount sitting there ready to put into action at a moment’s notice should the market provide a select opportunity you would want to pounce on Then the higher interest that IB pays on the idle cash sitting there most of time can be a big advantage. but if you use a lot of your balance typically for positions and trading then there is no advantage to having that higher interest 2) IB has a few advanced order types and software tweaks to orders that can be useful if you are predominantly using those for most of your orders. If you aren’t using them then no advantage other than the above there is absolutely no reason in my opinion to even consider using IB as a broker because their data feeds are subpar, their time to fill orders can lag at times compared side by side with other brokers and their trading platform is no where near what other brokers offer If other brokers decided to match or beat IB’s interest paid on idle cash then (not that difficult for them to do) then IB would probably lose about 30% of their customers
Other than for energies, intraday margins are still intact at TradeStation; as of now $2,090 for ES. At Interactive Brokers, it's currently $14,651 intraday initial for ES. To trade obviously there has to be drawdown cushion as well, but this goes on top of required margins and isn't part of it. Also from a trader's perspective, it's hardly "more secure" to have more money being tied up in a futures brokerage account. With what I save in margin TS vs. IB for a contract, I can literally keep 7.5 ounces of gold in my pocket.
ANOTHER round of equity margin increases: YM, $9075 --> $10,670 NQ, $13,200 --> $15,950 RTY, $5170 --> $6720 also RB, $5400 --> $6490