Interactive Brokers Broker Review

If you are an active trader i think you will find the trading platform not suitable for this purpose you can't submit fast orders just by keyboard clicks adjust size and price on the fly,
but to all the rest the system and the brokerage is one of the best,
with the big advantage of API so you can program what you do.
All the Best,
#tobecomeadaytrader

Interactive brokers is a great broker to trade stocks. However, their trading platform is horrible and their margins are outrageous. Their reliability is excellent. I have used them for more than 3 years and can not remember a time that they went down. I like the fact that their trading dome shows the profit loss next to the price. I would highly recommend this broker.

I am using IB since 2008 and their customer service is good and commission rates are competitive. Execution speed is also good.

I have two accounts here. Their charting is bare bones. I trade through IB but also have account at TradeStation for charting and data. I have read many people complain about IB having poor customer service but I have not had problems,

What can I say that hasn't already been said? IB is very solid and gives you pretty much everything a retail trader would want access to in a timely and efficient manner at a reasonable cost.

I have been with IB for 7 yrs.
I agree with rburns - I have always found customer service to be very helpful.
Two areas that I would like to see improve are
1.IB data pacing violation issue.
2.Availability of historical tick data.

I've been with IB for over 6 years. Their commissions are the absolute cheapest that I've found. Overall reliability is pretty good - I experience unplanned outages only about once per year with them. Their customer service is par for the course - I've learned how to deal with them to get the info that I want out of them. I've talked with my friend who's used their API to program an automated trading system, and he finds that their API is the easiest to use out of Sterling, Ice, etc.
Their biggest drawbacks are lack of decent charting tools- their candlesticks suck so much that you really have to use a 3rd party charting package, and they randomly aggregate their volume data, so doing any volume at price analysis is not going to be super accurate.

I have been with IB for over 10+ yrs. I read the bitching and griping and believe that if you know how to talk nicely to people {IB customer service} the are most helpful. They only seem to mirror your attitude.

I find IB miserable people to deal with.
Their support staff is totally incompetent and their programming abysmal. When technical errors are brought to their attention they do not read or even try to understand the issue. I fought for months to try to get them to fix a bug in the charting and when they finally listened - no apology or thanks. They also discontinued including the gold quotes in my futures package. They "Unbundled" the Canadian quotes and wanted me to pay an extra $30 a month on top of my monthly data fee.

I hate this company and will switch as soon as I can.

(Also I am convinced they steal a spread not filling your order until they can cross it on their own books at an extra tick ($12.50) . They once charge me the 0.25 above the high of the day -their own quotes!- so that's how I know they are stealing.)

I am an Interactive Brokers for over 4 years. Their order routing and executing technology is very fast, effective and reliable.

They offer free of charge a real-time datafeed (provided a minimum amount of commissions paid each month, else they charge $10 / month), this datafeed is not perfect but at least is a great back-up.

Their charting tools are very rudimentary, I use Ensign as primary charting platform.

Customer support is a weak point in my experience.