My account is with just2trade.com , whish has better commission rates than IB , plus margin is 3 1/2 % , free API and 1.6 second executions . Check it out.
Why do you keep pumping a piece of junk broker? Their commission rate is not better than IB for 500 shares or less. IB's margin rate currently starts at 1.59% and drops as low as 0.34%. The key difference is that IB is a direct access broker. Commissions are just one part of a trader's transaction costs. just2trade sells your order flow. Look at the very sad SEC Order Routing Report, for NYSE stocks 66% of orders are routed to Knight Capital Markets and 27% to CitiGroup Global Markets. Fill quality is not the same when your orders are sold.
On every January 1 or January 2, I close out my futures options and reenter them at the close as of December 31 (mark-to-market accounting). So, I go to account statement for December 31. All of the cash in my commodities column as well as my option positions are missing and not accounted for--so it appears that I am missing a huge chunk of my account. So, then I go to the margin reports section and view the report for December 31. It is a little better--shows a better landscape but still missing about $400.00. Lastly, I go to the Stress Report for December 31, 2008. Lo and Behold--it is the only accurate report available. Fortunately, it lists all of my positions and closing prices--so I was able to complete my mark-to-market task. Either presenting an inaccurate December 31 is new, or I haven't checked the report until January 2.