Def- You may well be right, I just choose not to make those judgements about people whose situations and experience I know nothing about. Hey I am no lawyer but I think I think you may want to be careful about posting personal financial info about your customers on the net. Hope I am not out of line with that comment, maybe you know something I don't. nusrat- didn't mean to avoid the option question- sorry I just missed it. Option rates are tiered- just like our equities rates. They would be $2/contract at the very most (based on pretty low volume) and could be much less.
1. As can be seen from my earlier posts about margins, I looked at IB's margins page just earlier this evening. 2. As for the other point, I'm not following you. All I have to do is prep the order, right-click, and select "Check Margin", right?
nusrat, my PM was simply - what is your agenda? You posted your message above. yes, I could ignore you but you are a client and thus i'm interested in what you have to say. did you rub me the wrong way - YES. You initially posted numerous threads with the same comments/info many times. That is annoying, remember the boy who cried wolf. is this a public forum, can I control what you have to say? - NO. However, you have posted a number of posts which are not favorable of IB. Again that is ok. I got your message but repeating the same message ad infinitem isn't helpful and thus I construed a hidden agenda. Thus my PM. Silly me for thinking that you might want to send me information in confidence with the goal of improving our firm. With that said, if not happy, please close your account.
Given the wealth and variety of IB<==>customer communications on these boards, I'm puzzled by the sudden need for confidentiality in this particular case. "you are a client and thus i'm interested in what you have to say." What a novel manner of demonstrating it. In any case, all the details have been provided both on these boards and to IB's help-desk, as you well know.
Chad, Good thinking. It's just plain silly to draw conclusions based on a single acct opened only four months ago. I'm exceedingly protective of my assets, hedge my institutional risk (and network congestion risk) by maintaining multiple accounts, and would never consider funding a new acct over the bare minimum (or trading significantly) until I've used that institution for a good long time, no matter how large or old or well-regarded they are. The same goes for my O-X acct (the only other options acct I've used since I started trading options in my Schwab acct in 1994), even though I've had my O-X acct for much longer than my IB acct. I intend to wait a good deal longer before finalizing any conclusions. But at the moment it's difficult for me to have complete confidence in a broker which can't even properly recognize and accept an order to close (as a *credit* transaction) an ITM spread of laughably puny size -- a situation for which the broker's only solution is that I "must deposit more funds". (Described in excruciating detail here.) Such confidence is made even less likely when the broker's reps respond to said incident in unofficial venues with nothing but scorn and repeated exhortations to "close your account". At the moment I lack the time and energy (unless provoked) to enumerate all the posts on these boards wherein other traders have expressed concerns and reservations about the funding or security of their IB accts. And it would be superfluous, since I only need cite a single incident of which I learned just as I was initiating the opening of my IB acct. Right now I'm mysteriously unable to find the original post on IB's boards, wherein a trader described how his or her IB acct had been raided by a hacker. Fortunately, the incident has been reprised in June by someone else on IB's boards here, to wit . . . "These bulletin boards recently showed that somebody from the Middle East tried to steal an IB customer's account. The hacker successfully intercepted all email from IB to the customer, and thereby obtained all the necessary security tokens to change the email address of the account and to wire funds to an account at Ameritrade. The scheme was foiled purely by accident. The hacker made the mistake of requesting the change of email address on a Friday, with the result that the request was not processed until the following Monday. Email confirming the request to wire funds was therefore sent to the customer, rather than to the hacker's account. This delay in changing email address was the only thing that resulted in the customer finding out about the scheme to drain his account. The customer reported the scheme to IB, and incredibly, hours later, IB did approve the change in email address, so that all email would be routed to the hacker, instead of the customer. The customer was monitoring the situation, so that he was able to contact IB immediately and stop the train. The point is that this scheme failed only because the customer was LUCKY." Small wonder that I've been so stingy with my IB acct.
i've gone out of my way to helping many IB (and even non-IB) clients on these boards via PM. excuse me :eek: the above post had to do with a trojan horse planted on someones PC. it was not a breech of IB security. you are dangerously close to slander. Why do I say close the account? You are taking valuable time from the customer service desk and others while taking even more time to flame the firm that you are tying to develop a relationship. On one hand you're reluctant to switch firms due to the costs and other pros at IB. On the other, you're not happy with the level of customer service. I believe you want one on one personal service with your options questions and trades. IB can and will not do that for you. BTW, you did say that you eventually received a message with an explanation. you also were told that the trade desk could execute the trade for you. you glanced over both of these.
For quoting what's posted on your own boards? I think not. "you're reluctant to switch firms" It's called "circumspection" and "reserving judgment". "you want one on one personal service" Errmmm . . . let's see: one customer notifies one help-desk rep of a problem. Yep, you're right, sounds like one-on-one to me. I guess they've been doing it wrong? "you eventually received a message with an explanation" You're confusing two different incidents. You're speaking of the commissions incident. No one has ever addressed the issue of the ITM spread that TWS suddenly won't allow to be closed without legging (although TWS supposedly supports it, has done it before, and allowed the position to be opened without legging). You know full well that this is a matter of a customer requesting, not tutoring, but rather resolution of a malfunction in IB's service. "you also were told that the trade desk could execute the trade for you" Yes, for a wholly unjustifiable charge. Everyone at IB has glossed over the fact that TWS should accept this trade as it has before (without requiring additional funds, legging risk, or charges for manual intervention), merely because IB can't be bothered to deal with it. You're not a novice. Don't feign ignorance of the nature of a unitary (unlegged) spread transaction entered as a TWS "combo" order. To date, no one from IB -- including you -- has spoken a word toward the substance of the matter of the unclosable position. The record is clear, including every word passed between the customer and the help-desk, as described here.
the slander referred to the below comment. nothing can be done without a password. you imply that these details are being sent via e-mail. The hacker successfully intercepted all email from IB to the customer, and thereby obtained all the necessary security tokens to change the email address of the account and to wire funds to an account at Ameritrade
You need to stop speed-reading. I imply nothing. The entire quoted and italicized text is reproduced verbatim from your boards, where IB has seen fit to allow it to remain visible to the public continuously since June. Ask Dave Battan, IB General Counsel; he'll set you straight (and perhaps also take the time to explain the difference between libel and slander). And you need to familiarize yourself with your own IB Customer Service Guidelines, regarding the role of the help-desk.