An important IB customer told me that IB closed down some of its servers during the big move. Can anyone affirm this.
majority of IB profits and for most broker/dealer these days is in prop trading like goldman is from trading their own account...as for that alll the participants and all the traders are their competition... their prop desk at IB is completely different from their retail broker division..it's separate dept. they don't need a retail division,,,this retail division is just to sell shares of the company to investors and publicity....and is very small part of their profit or business and IB will liquidate positions with 10 minute notice and won't do any margin calls or pursue collectioins if you owe them money. they won't risk any of their capital because of clients blowing up their accounts.
Why would a big intelligent company keep up a useless department? My guess: The retail part is like a big continuous poll: What is the market sentiment? Where did I hear something similar recently? Oh, yes, I think I remember now: GS.