a couple of other posters have made points I would have made about IB. I don't understand the significance of the mm claim. You can always self-direct your route. In my experience limit orders go up on Islnd immediately. I have never seen any screwing around. As for TS, I have never used the TS brokerage. I did use the early versions of Ts from ver. 1.0 up through the disaster that was 2000i. Of these, two(1.0 and 2000i) were clearly not ready for prime time when released. Version 4.0 was brilliant. Their game was a common ploy in the software world--keep introducing "new and better" versions of stuff that worked perfectly well, charge you a bomb for the new one and drop support on the old. Their tech rep's had little apparent knowledge of the product or trading. For nonprogrammers, learning Easylanguage is time-consuming, and at least when I was using them, they would not answer coding questions on the phone. Very annoying and difficult to deal with. Frankly, they left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I would never, ever consider using them as a broker. I suppose it's possible they have improved, but the same people, the Cruz brothers, are still running things. I will say I learned a lot from the backtesting ability of TS. I think some sort of backtesting is just essential for a newbie trying to trade futures. At the time TS was pretty much the only game in town, at least for a retail trader without extensive programming ability. Now there are plenty of alternatives.
version, Time to quickly chime in... Yes, we had a bad week last week with a couple of unrelated issues (internet, a server crashed after the close, ticker issues etc). Murphy's law - when it rains it pours. As in the past, the issues will be addressed and resolved. Anyone truly using IB with a reliable internet connection knows that IB's reliability is amongst the best in the business. Stops: version, you had one stop that failed and it was explained that we missed the tick. Your case has been escalated to mgmt for a review. GTC on IB's servers? Where to you think IB should place them? Do you realize that all exchanges don't accept GTC orders? We've probably got over 10,000 stops working at any given time. If there was a systemic problem with their triggering, you'd hear a lot more about. Flow: IB DOESN'T TRADE AGAINST YOUR FLOW. The fact that an unscrupulous broker (yes, I know who you are) would PM you and state otherwise only proves that they are unethical. Compare IB's SEC routing reports to the other broker who contacted you and the brokers you're considering switching to. Then tell me who is selling your order flow.
I third. W/ IB for 3 years now. Have had IB LLC as well as IB Canada accounts. No complaints whatsoever. If it were really that unreliable or shady, I doubt that I would be able to continue to make a living using them as my primary broker (I make money, but Iâm not stellar). Def et al, thanks & keep up the great work.
I just don't like putting up with incompetence, that's all. There was someone here in the other NYSE stop thread who said they had only 5 problems in the last 2 years with IB. Only 5. Hmmm, I guess he will wait untill he hits 10 or so before he wakes up.
I've been trading e-minis with IB for about a year now. The only problem I had was TWS disconnecting on rare occasions. I can't imagine a more robust platform than IB's. I contacted their customer service several times and I was overall satisfied with their answers and attitude. Although, once during an Internet based chat with an IB rep, he made some rude remarks and I told him about his attitude. After that, he apologized and that calmed me down. Chinook
IB is getting behind the curve on lowest commissions. It's natural when people start complaining, you don't want to be put up with mistakes if you're paying more. That is what's going on imo
Although I am not sure I said 5, I believe you could be referring to me. In 2 years, I paid IB (and I'm only estimating all these numbers) $10k in commissions and had 5 stops which cost me on average $20 per order. That's a total of $100. Again, all these numbers are estimates, but the loss due to the stop trigger problem adds approximately 1% to my commission cost. Now, if you find me a broker with a data feed who lags as little on the eminis as IB's in heavy volume and rapid price movement and whose commissions (including ECN fees, SEC fees, and everything else there might be, like order handling fees, fees for mailing statements etc.) are no more than 1% above IB's, then I might consider switching. Of course, financial stability of the company, the details of the insurance they have taken out for my account, system stability and reliability, and things like data/platform/wire transfer fees will also be considered in my decision. Plus, if the expected gain from switching brokers is not more than a few hundred dollars a year, I would rather stay with a company who has already proven itself to me by providing consistent, more than satisfactory service for years; who I am used to; and who have been improving steadily since I have had an account with them.
Hi All, The API (Application Programing Interface) has "almost" been pioneered by IB. For years they have been introducing steady improvements and expansions. Everything is freely and openly documented and available on IB's website. More, their online demo system (available under both a browser and a standalone version) allows anybody to online test his program. Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix is supported. Interfaces go from the simplest DDE Excell to netsockets. What about competition? I love all those brokers beating IB with lower commissions for volume. What about API's? Many pretend to have @-Trader and #-Trader. Want to know more about this? Look at their websites: typically nothing. Call them up on the phone, most of the time you find out they can tell you nothing at all about this. In fact you have to pay an outside organization a few $1000 only to get at the docs and the development kit. All this for free at IB's website. When you are ready with your program, some require a form of an exam which may add to the cost. At one test time is advertised at $200 an hour. The other does not seem to offer any online test facility at all - only local server testing. Do you have to try later at your broker for real money? So when you finally get the OK, they will give you some kind off access string that you pass to your broker to get you going. I think one has to be insane to get in such a tricky adventure. We read at ET how much more reliable @-Trader and #-Trader are supposed to be than IB. Some complain about IB's telephone service. I must say I always got helpful replies from IB via email within a reasonable time (3 days maximum over a weekend). Did you read those posts by @-Trader and #-Trader users trying to get help from their brokers? They got promptly referred to @-Trader and #-Trader who reportedly told them it was none of their business, sending them back to their brokers. You can whine a lot about IB, their commissions could be lower for volume, they could perhaps fire rude telephone operators (if any). But for API they really know how it should be done! IB will only face true competition the day that some broker will stand up showing that he can handle API support like IB at an overall cost lower than IB's. Be good, nononsense
I'm not going to think poorly of people who for some reason or another aren't happy with their broker. S**t happens and a traders confidence is paramount to the kind of motivation you need to do this. It's no big deal, just pull up you stakes and move your camp somewhere else. It's almost better to do that than to withdraw into some kind of elaborate evaluation. I guess the only thing I'm dissappointed with is the demonization of brokers. I think they are under an enormous amount of regulation and the ones that serve Daytraders are probable concerned with the politics as well, so personalizing your troubles is just irrational. Just keep an open mind and look at it from a business perspective.
their API developement rocks, no question. BUT: Brokers are rated, loved/hated, compared in terms of their ability to execute trades, to provide stable trading platforms, to reconcile trades, clarify breaks in the reporting, and in the end API connectivity. Why do some people seem to mix up the order of importance really all the times? This (ET) is not an IT website and brokers are not there to cater to IT guys. We want to trade and brokers want to collect commissions from traders not programmers. As APIs is important to some, I would bet that the vast majority rather focuses on above-mentioned points. Discussions about API and technology are helpful but recent criticism about one or the other broker did not focus on their API connectivity, or lack thereof. I do not understand why we talk about APIs the whole time and that in several discussion threads instead of the top 5 most important features a broker should offer and maintain in high working order. Just my 2 cents.