Of course no firm is "immune to failure" unless eligible for government bailouts. The non-trivial question is: what FCM is sturdier *and* takes retail accounts?
What do you mean by "sturdy? I know of many FCM that do not have the money IB does (segregated account value), that accept small retail clients, and are "tiny" compared to IB. Why does that make them less "sturdy"? I have been with my broker/FCM for 3 years, no problems, no hiccups. What is the deal here?
So your problem is leverage on VIX? Why don't you trade VIX Futures CFD? Brokers like IG will give you very good leverage. And CFDs are more closely correlated to VIX than ETFs
Have a look: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-demise-of-bear-stearns-idUSN1724031920080317 I don't think anyone could predict it would down to $2 when it was happening
Moving out of IB - after months of having a technical problem that cant fix with not receiving quotes for stocks/ETFs they billed me $62 in fictitious charges above my normal fees. Their tech support is not disputing my problem - they have my screenshots and tickets to back this up. They are calling it 'back billing' when my statements prove this is bogus. This is clearly some sort of retaliation to get rid of me - I was very patient with them on this problem and had been paying for the broken data feed for months before they hit me with with bogus back billing. They should have done the opposite - credited me back for the data feed since it was not working instead of hitting me with bogus fees. Once my $ is out I will be going after the bogus charges to get reimbursed.
If IB charge the lowest commissions in the industry, isn't this similar to an 'investment' company paying out the highest investment rates in the industry. It's like, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. IB is not a company to fully trust imo.