Interactive Brokers Review

IBKR Pro Options Trades: Commissions for options contracts are tiedred on US exchanges that use Interactive Brokers Smart routing. A premium exceeding $.10 equals $.65 per contract, with a minimum of $1.00 and a maximum of $.50. The rate for premiums between $.05 to $.10 is $.50 per agreement. For premiums below $.05, the rate for each contract is $.25

IBKR Pro Other Benefits: Interactive Brokers doesn't accept payment for order flow. This is a critical element of ensuring quality order execution. Interactive Brokers is the leader in the industry with the lowest margin rates. They range from 1.55% to a shocking 0.75% for clients with more than $1,000,000 with the brokerage.

IBKR Pro Misc Fees: All traders should be aware about the various fees and minimums that Interactive Brokers charge. Simply put, you can maintain a $100,000 balance and spend no more than $30 per month in commissions. Otherwise, fees could reach as high as $20 per month. We recommend IBKRLite for beginners and everyday investors. You can also check out our list of top brokers to get free trading.

Interactive Brokers has over 30,000 mutual fund options worldwide, including 10,000 in the US. At least 4,000 mutual funds in the US are free of commission; the standard commission rate for all other mutual funds is $14.95.

Platforms and tools

Interactive Brokers' flagship platform is the desktop-based Trader Workstation, which allows you to trade all assets and commodities. Although TWS isn't designed for novice investors, it ranks among the top trading platforms in this industry.

There are many professional tools available: TWS offers a variety of trading tools for experienced traders, including Algo trading and Options Strategy Lab, Volatility Labs, Risk Navigators, Market Scanners, Portfolio Builders, Portfolio Builder, Risk Navigators, Risk Navigators, Risk Navigators, Market Navigators, Risk Navigators, Market Navigators, Market Navigators, Market Navigators, Market Navigators, Portfolio Builders, Strategy Builder, Strategy Builder, Strategy Builder, Strategy Builder, Futures, options, futures, forex, as well as well as tools. You can have watch lists that include everything from equities to individual option contracts, futures and forex. Column customization is possible with 494 data points.

Ibot: IBot is also available in TWS Mobile and uses a foundation in artificial intelligence to quickly serve customer requests via chat or voice in the iPhone App. All supported features include portfolio information, orders, quotes and many more. Consider the following: "What was the last price for GOOG?" Or, "Chart APL vs. MSFT", or "Buy 100 shares from FB." Only TD Ameritrade is allowed to compete with IBot.

TWS's drawbacks include the difficulty of tasks such as picking up stocks to trade due to the large number of securities that are available. Typing in "AAPL" to find Apple will return a slew if matches. This can make it difficult for non-professionals. Automated technical analysis tools such as Trading Central (Recognia) are only available as a paid subscription.

Interactive Brokers' Client Portal is available to less experienced traders through its website. Portal provides all the essential features needed to manage and trade a basic portfolio. Portal is the primary trading platform for IBKR Lite customers. It is less robust but easier to use. It was good but not great in my testing. It is still relatively new, so we can assume that there will be improvements over time.

Research

Fundamentals Explorer within Client Portal will work best for casual investors. TWS is a comprehensive package that includes all the necessary tools for professional traders and professionals.

TWS is great stuff: TWS research highlights include many screeners, extensive back testing functionality, and portfolio analysis instruments, all of which are excellent. Interactive Brokers provides over 70 third-party provider feeders for traders who want to do specific research. Morningstar is one example. They are either available free of charge or can be purchased monthly. All provider packages purchased can be integrated directly into TWS.

TWS has its drawbacks. You have to be able to navigate TWS to find what you need. There are very few streamlined views. The good news is that Client Portal is much easier to use than TWS. It's not as intuitive as some industry leaders but it offers a far better research experience.

Fundamentals Explorer: This tool allows everyday investors to do traditional fundamental research on stocks and ETFs. Fundamentals Explorer is available in Client Portal, TWS and the mobile application. It uses design to visualize data. The Social Sentiment tab, for example, uses a variety of Twitter data to determine a trend in social sentiment, overall sentiment score, or other key takeaways.

ESG Research: Interactive Brokers offers a range of ESG research and ratings across its platforms. The Impact tool is a unique tool that allows you to score portfolio stocks for ESG-specific metrics. Your Impact Dashboard will show you an A-F score for your portfolio after you have identified the issues that matter to your. The tool is also available on mobile. From there, it can make recommendations for similar companies that you could exchange your shares with. Our 2021 No. 1 award went to the ESG Impact Dashboard. 1 New Trading Tool.

PortfolioAnalyst is a new tool that allows traders to view portfolio performance and composition at the hedge fund level. Interactive Brokers offers a free version that allows non-clients to link all their accounts and run reports. Although it is easier to use than Personal Capital, it's still very easy to use. It's still a powerful tool for traders who have assets across multiple institutions.

Mobile trading

Interactive Brokers supports mobile trading across all devices. Interactive Brokers offers everything professional traders need, including lightning-quick streaming data and full-featured order entry.

Charting: The charting system is robust with 70 indicators and customizations. However, panning is not as smooth as HTML5 charting software. Some features, such as index and stock comparisons, aren't included.

Considerations: The app cannot deliver stock alerts via push notification. Notifications are sent via email instead, which is strange considering the sophistication of Interactive Brokers technology.

Offering Investments

Interactive Brokers offers the largest range of services in the industry, and is a leader in many areas including international trading. Customers can trade on more than 135 global markets in 33 countries.

Interactive Brokers offers crypto? Interactive Brokers doesn't offer cryptocurrency as a trading asset. To trade popular tokens like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin, you will need to sign up with a crypto exchange.

Forex: You cannot trade retail forex in the United States without being an Interactive Brokers "Eligible Contract Participant". This refers to an individual or company with assets exceeding $10 million.

Education

Interactive Brokers has many options to help you learn more about investing and trading. There is plenty of content available on Interactive Brokers, from the Traders Academy portal to the IBKR Quant blog. You can also find video content and written content. Progress tracking is not available for articles and videos, but it is available for quizzes and at least one per lesson.

Courses and webinars: The Trader's Academy courses can be arranged by level of experience as well as topic. Interactive Brokers also offers archived content, such as recordings and live webinars. Much of this content is also available on the company's YouTube channel. Interactive Brokers also offers many short videos. However, we found them to mostly be platform tutorials.

Banking

Interactive Brokers doesn't offer traditional banking services but it does offer a debit and bill pay service, as well as the opportunity to earn interest on cash that isn't yet invested.

To earn interest, your account must be denominated using a base currency with a positive rate of interest. You can only earn interest on cash above certain minimum levels. These levels vary by currency. The bottom line is that the US has low interest rates, which means there is very little yield.

Last Thoughts

Interactive Brokers offers a great choice for investors who meet its criteria. They offer industry-leading commission rates, more than 68 order types, and trading in over 135 international markets.

Interactive Brokers, meanwhile, has a competive offering for casual investors. They offer $0 stock and ETF trades via IBKR Lite, along with thorough research through the Client Portal web portal.

FAQs

Interactive Brokers: Is my money secure?

Interactive Brokers is well capitalized and licensed in almost a dozen jurisdictions. This makes it a safe place to keep your money. Interactive Brokers (NASDAQ : IBKR), a publicly traded company has a market capitalization exceeding $28 billion as at May 28, 2021.

SIPC insurance protects money in investment accounts with Interactive Brokers in the U.S. It covers up to $500,000 worth of securities and cash up to $250,000 (up to $750,000 per customer). Interactive Brokers also offers an Insured Bank Deposit Sweep program, which covers up to $2.5 Million in FDIC insurance, if you have more than $250,000 cash.

Interactive Brokers may vary in the level of security depending on where you live and the regulatory requirements it follows. Interactive Brokers holds client funds in the U.S., U.K. Canada, Australia, Singapore and India.

Are Interactive Brokers suitable for beginners?

Interactive Brokers' web-based Client Portal platform, while not the best for beginners, will be able to meet most traders' needs.

Interactive Brokers is expanding its range of educational materials, including IBKR Campus, Traders Academy and other rich resources, to help you learn as a beginner trader or investor.

Interactive Brokers are so affordable

Interactive Brokers was the first to reduce its commissions to zero dollars through its IBKR Lite offering. A wave of U.S. brokerages soon followed. Interactive Brokers still offers commission-based account options, such as IBKR PRO, but it can offer very low commissions due to its ability routing orders intelligently across many execution venues.

IBKR might receive volume discounts or rebates. Some of these may be passed onto clients in the form savings or price increases depending on where your order is routed.

About Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers is headquartered in Greenwich (NASDAQ: IBKR). It was established in 1977 by Thomas Peterffy. He is known as an "early innovator in computer-assisted trade" (1). Interactive Brokers is best known for its international reach. It serves over 135 markets worldwide (2). Interactive Brokers' clients have placed an average of 1.9 million trades each day that the market is open. They also service over 980,000 brokerage accounts and more than $232 billion in customer equity as of September 2020 (3).