Interactive Brokers LLC is a U.S.-based brokerage firm. It is often best known for its trader workstation, API's, and low margins. It operates the largest electronic trading platform in the U.S. by number of daily average revenue trades. The company brokers stocks, options, futures, EFPs, futures options, forex, bonds, and funds.
Sorry this is a really noob question, but how do I use IB to convert USD to EUR and vice versa? I see there’s a EUR.USD Idealpro instrument. If I buy that I’m paying USD and ending up with a balance of EUR right? If I sell that what’s happening since I have no EUR? Do I end up using margin and with a short position in EUR? If I did have EUR, would it use that instead? Finally what determines which is the “primary currency” of a pair? For example, converting CAD/USD, I need to search for USD, but converting JPY/CAD, I need to search CAD. Thanks!
I opened an account with IB because of there enticing spread structure, fast execution, etc. I'm coming from trading with FXCM. I feel like an idiot, the charting is terrible, I can't figure out how to properly set trades or get really anything to work the way I want it too. I definitely want something aesthetically pleasing and easy to use, but obviously having low trading costs is extremely important. Am I SOL trying to learn this, or is there some sort of GUI I can overlay on top of this or something?
How come when I buy 20k USD/JPY and then sell 20k USD/JPY I am left over with some JPY balance in my account? Same thing with other currencies, I've used brokers such as FXCM and Oanda to paper trade in the past and never had this problem until IB. I keep having to use the "close all non base currency balances" button which charges me commission for a 3rd time (open trade, close trade, close leftover balance). Anyone else have this problem or am I just retarded? Thanks
Interactive Brokers don't allow a 0.1 pip granularity for forex?
Trying to submit a limit order using Interactive Brokers TWS for EUUSD with price 1.13772 I get the error: "The price 1.13772 does not conform to the minimum price variation of 0.00005 for this contract." Does it make sense that Interactive Brokers don't allow a 0.1 pip granularity? How can I find out?
Question - Forex & Investing in foreign equity with Interactive Brokers.
I opened a IB account and started investing a couple of months ago. I'm European, but exclusively invested in US stock so far. When analyzing my performance, I only recently discovered that I am getting fucked - hard - by the "forex method" that is applied. I always assumed that when I bought shares in USD - IB would exchange the amount needed for the purchase from EUR to USD. And when i sold, it would do the opposite. In this case I would profit from the rising dollar. As it turns out however, that's not how it works at all, as instead I borrow the needed amount and the loan is reversed when I sell. As a result, My returns are decimated by the rise in USD. From what I understand - I should have exchanged my entire cash position to at the start before investing. My question is: is it too late to do this? or can I somehow still 'reset the loan' made for my investments and switch to USD all together? As I don't see the upward USD trend reversing any time soon...
CFD Forex vs Currency Conversion in Interactive brokers
I would like to understand the difference between 2 of them. There are separate check box in the account maintainance window. I am holding a cash account and would like to convert between USD,EUR,JPY What is the difference in between them. Should we use different thing for transacting (I am planning to select EUR.USD but it is written like forex). Is there any difference between spreads for Forex and currency conversion. Any clarification is welcome
Has anyone used IB for Forex or any other products? How are they with getting funds out? Would like to consolidate Futures and Forex trading with one broker.
Does anyone know exactly how Interactive Brokers fills forex limit orders
If the latest bid and ask are say 100 / 105 respectively, and I put a bid in at 101, will I be at the front of the queue to be matched to the next person who makes a Sell market order? Or will I have to wait until the 105 ask drops down to match my 101 bid before it is paired off? I've just tried IB's Forex paper trading account and it seems to be using the latter method. I'm hoping for the former method as this means I can avoid the spread costs myself if my limit orders are filled regularly enough. Thanks.
I frequently need to exchange currency (mostly between USD and EUR) and I'm always looking for the best deal. Would IB be a good tool to transfer in one currency, do the exchange and transfer out the other currency? I'm not interested in actively trading back and forth with currencies, take "virtual positions", or borrow/margin. Just to utilize the exchange rate they offer for simple transactions. I do have bank accounts in both currencies. If the spreads are half as good as what they advertise, the savings would easily pay for their monthly fees, but I'd like to know if my plan is too good to be true. Thanks for any insight
Interactive Brokers: Brexit account migration = insurance drops from 500k USD to 20k EUR
Is anyone else concerned about this? They are migrating from UK to Hungary, Ireland or Luxembourg: https://ibkr.info/node/3515 Main reason I used IB was safety/regulation. After this migration we lose FSCS & SIPC protection, compensation will be the same as e.g. DeGiro or Trading 212 (20k EUR), for me there is no point to stay on IB any longer as I much prefer Trading 212's modern platform. What are your thoughts?
In 2018 IBKR established Interactive Brokers Luxembourg SARL (“IBLUX”) which received regulatory authorization in November 2019. In addition, we are in the process of creating two additional brokers based in the European Union: Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited (“IBIE”) and Interactive Brokers Central Europe Befektetési ZRt (“IBCE”). We expect the majority of the clients based in Western Europe will be migrated to IBIE, those in Central and Eastern Europe to IBCE and a select group of clients to IBLUX. Currently, provided they meet eligibility requirements, IBUK clients may be protected in relation to investment services under the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (“UK FSCS”) at an amount of up to £50,000. As IBUK clients are carried by our US broker, IBL, the securities segment of their account may be eligible for insurance by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”) at an amount of up to USD 500,000. Under the EU Brokers IBLUX, IBIE and IBCE eligible claimants may be entitled to claim compensation up to a maximum of EUR 20,000.
Later update - currently for IBUK, the protection amount depends on what you are trading with:
If you trade with forex, CFDs, non-US stock index options or futures, you are protected by the FSCS, up to £85,000.
If you trade with stocks, bonds, funds or US stock index options, you are protected by the US investor protection, i.e. $500,000, with a cash limit of $250,000.
I know that brokerage questions get asked alot and I apologize if this has been answered before, but is TWS the only brokerage that offers this? TWS is way more robust of a platform than I need right now and their fees also seem pretty robust, so Id like to know if there are any other options before I switch. A UI that doesn't look like it's straight out of the 90's would be a cool plus, but I think thats asking too much! Thanks for any recommendations.
What is the best way to invest in index funds and ETFs while living in Germany?
Background: My wife and I live in Germany. She is a EU citizen and I'm American. The account would be in her name to make things easier tax wise. We're interested in investing in index funds and ETFs. We're trying to decide on a platform to go with but are having trouble figuring out the best option for us. Ideally we'd like a platform that offers a wide selection of ETFs and index funds, but it does not need to offer FOREX, cryptocurrency, etc. Which potential option would you recommend for our situation? It'd be nice to hear anyone's feedback who has used any of these platforms.
Fonds Spärlane or Savings plan - The DKB Sparpläne https://www.dkb.de/privatkunden/wertpapiersparen/fonds/. This seems like a good option. They have a decent selection of products and offer the ability to automatically purchase into a fund/ETF each month. Since they are a German Bank they have to offer tax forms as well, which makes life easier.
International Broker - Interactive Brokers or Fidelity International. We don't have 100k to invest so I don't think IB is the right option due to the 10 euro per month fee. Fidelity Int'l has a wide selection but I need to do more research to see what tax info they provide.
German Broker - I haven't come across one that I'm crazy about yet so any recommendations would be helpful.
Hi everyone, New to the community here. I am looking to code a trading bot to trade stocks. I'm very new to algorithmic trading, I have some coding experience from highschool and university (excel VBA) and I want to start trading as a way to grow my money. I also enjoy programming and my neighbor claims he makes good money trading forex using an algorithm, so I thought if he could do it, so can I. I want to use interactive brokers because of their low commissions and python because of it's wide application (in other things), however I've read getting interactive broker to work with python is difficult. What are some of the other brokers that are comparable/better than IBKR for algotrading? Is trying to use python the wrong approach or should I just be open to using other languages? I want to trade stocks because of all the instruments out there, I know the most about stocks. I'll be coming back to this forum so I appreciate any and all help I can get!
I'm apparently some kind of moron- I'm unable to figure out how to get set up with automated trading on interactive brokers. Currently I'm paper trading forex on OandA using some simple curl requests on a headless server. I'd like to start trading futures, and ibkr was the top recommendation. Goals: -When my own (already developed) system generates an entry or exit alert, execute a market order on a NASDAQ micro futures contact. -Do it on a headless Google cloud server From chatting with some folks, I've heard I need to use IB Gateway, and there may be a need to initially use GUI for authentication. That's fine, as long as GUI elements aren't needed later when it's running. I don't need any kind of data feed from IBKR, since I already have a system that generates alerts when I want it to. I just need the bare minimum to actually execute these market orders. I've signed up for IBKR and gotten my account approved and all that. Then I thought I'd go over to the education library and work through the TWS materials (just to get acquainted) and then go through the TWS programming Python course. At this point, the website wants me to register or login. I click the button that says I already have an ibkr account, it asks me to login, I do, then it takes me to the account page. Where is the course!?😵 After going through that loop every which way, I've given up on that for now and I'm here asking you for help. Anyone willing to give some guidance, either in this thread or through DM? I feel like what I want to do is extremely simple and I will be barely scratching the surface of what's available to me through IBKR. I just want to get started. Advice, resources, guides, and insults are all welcome! Thanks!
Is Interactive Brokers the only place I can trade options through an API?
I'm a long time day trader who works as a software engineer. I'm hoping to finally merge these two passions, but finding the options for algotrading API's are really lacking. I looked into the following...
Alpaca - Docs look good. API seems solid. But doesn't support anything except US stocks (no options, commodities, forex, etc), which means I'd be missing out on like 95% of my current profits. In my opinion, this is not a serious option for serious traders with that glaring limitation.
Interactive brokers - Most promising. Supports options/forex/etc. But I can't make any sense of the pricing page (no idea if it's cheap or terribly expensive. can't even get a basic sense of it). I'd like to simply test out the API in a sandbox but you can't do anything at all until you apply for a brokerage account, which I've done and waiting
My question to all of you: What platform/services are you using to algotrade? What's your stack? What options did I miss? Is it really this bad? I'm going to wait and try out IB, but I'm genuinely considering building my own platform using NASDAQ Total View but it's expensive and I feel like there must be an easier way. Thanks for your input. Yes, I read the wiki.
I’ve been looking for a broker that has an API for index futures and ideally also futures options. I’m looking to use the API to build a customized view of my risk based on balances, positions, and market conditions. Searching the algotrading sub I found many API-related posts, but then when I actually read them and their comments, I found they’re often lacking in real substance. It turns out many brokers or data services that have APIs don’t actually support index futures and options via the API, and instead they focus on equities, forex, or cypto. So here’s the list of what I’ve found so far. This isn’t a review of these brokers or APIs and note that I have a specific application in mind (index futures and futures options). Perhaps you’re looking for an API for equities, or you just want data and not a broker, in which case there may be a few options. Also, I’m based in the US so I didn’t really look for brokers or platforms outside the US. If you have experience with these APIs, please chime in with your thoughts. Also, I may have missed some brokers or platforms. If I did or if you see anything that needs correction please let me know.
Broker with a variety of platforms including CQG, Rithmic, TT, some with APIs
Wow, this list grew longer than I originally thought it would be. If you spot a mistake, please let me know and I’ll correct it. Edit: - added Lightspeed API - updated Dashprime to indicate some of the APIs available - added Medved Trader to table - added marketstack to table
¿Replicar mi portfolio en otra divisa es una buena idea?
Estoy re-armando mi "lazy-portfolio" que básicamente va a consistir en IWDA + EIMI (entre ambos al 90%) y eventualmente en unos años AGGU (bonos, hasta el 10% e ir subiendo a medida que pasen los años). Mi objetivo es quedarme comprado de acá a 10 o 15 años COMO MINIMO y comprar todos los meses mi cuota de tickers. Como tenía armada una posición en VTI (all US market), al desarmarla me quedaron USD que usé para empezar a armar IWDA (USD) y acá me surgió una duda para la cual no encontré grandes fuentes de referencia. IWDA también cotiza en EUR, bajo otro ticker, y yo podría armar mi posición (o replicarla) en esta divisa, o simplemente quedarme en USD. Es el mismo caso para los otros dos tickers, todos cotizan en EUR y yo podría comprarlos en esta moneda. Mi método de fondeo al broker es en EUR ya que las transferencias SEPA me son mucho más baratas que las SWIFT, con lo cual si yo persiguiera un portfolio en USD, debería sumar un costo de FOREX para salir de mi banco (ya que mi dinero está en USD) y luego nuevamente pasar a USD en el broker para comprar el ticket de IWDA. Si bien las comisiones por estas transformaciones son "bajas", mi plan es a largo plazo y quiero intentar optimizarlo donde se pueda. Entonces, me surgieron estas dudas: 1 - ¿es mejor que evite el doble forex e ir directo al ticker en EUR? Este cotiza en el exchange de Amsterdan, pero yo entiendo que el ETF sigue igual domiciliado en Irlanda, con lo cual a nivel taxes sigue conviniendo, indistintamente de la moneda en la que compre el ticker. 2 - ¿Sería buena estrategia diversificar la divisa de este portfolio? Podría replicar mi posición de manera de que quede 50% en USD y 50% en EUR. A priori me suena que es mala idea por fees, pero quiero entender todo el panorama. Para poner un ejemplo, vi en otros subs gente "enojada" porque la ganancia por la suba del ticker de IWDA se la comió la caída del USD con respecto al EUR (siendo ellos residentes europeos). 3- Estoy en el fixed price tier de Interactive Brokers. Cada compra cuesta 5USD (precio fijo, no importa la cantidad) y de forex tendré entre 2/3 USD más. Y si no compro nada en un mes me cobran 10USD. Esto me hizo pensar que a la hora de rebalancear, quizas sería mejor idea tener un portfolio con solo dos ETF, como VWRA + AGGU. ¿Qué opinión les parece esto? Igual la pregunta 1 es válida para este caso también. Les dejo links a los diferentes ETFS: IWDA (todo el mercado en paises desarrollados): https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/251882/ EIMI (todo el mercado en paises emergentes, es casi todo china): https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/264659/ishares-msci-emerging-markets-imi-ucits-etf AGGU (bonos) https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/291772/ishares-core-global-aggregate-bond-ucits-etf-fund VWRA (de Vanguard, todo el mercado, pero sigue otro indice) https://global.vanguard.com/portal/site/loadPDF?country=nl&docId=21869
Hello I'm 21 going in army soon and plan to invest 500 every month into SWRD(90%) + EIMI(10%) which broker should I use? The fees SCB - (10 dollar min commission fee or 0.2%, 0.2% trading fee, and a 0.43% forex spread) Saxo - (10 dollar min commission fee or 0.06%, 0.08% trading fee, custody fee of 0.12% and a forex spread of 0.75%) Also what do you guys think of investing in IT etfs like QQQ or healthcare etfs with low expense ratio. Do let me know if I'm missing out something or there's a better way of investing like investing every 2 months instead or robos. Thank you for reading. Edit - Thanks all for the feedback I really appreciate it. I have decided on Interactive brokers. I forgot to mention that after 2 years of NS I will be in uni for another 4 years and I probably won't be investing during this time. Assuming I liquidate my investment at 27 from SCB and transfer to IB, I calculated that I'm at a gain of 60 sgd by not going with IB which is really nothing and it seems kind of troublesome to do that so I'll just stick with IB. Thanks all
Beating the UK brokerage via true arbitrage - £8k -> £98k ($128k) since 21st April
Alright you American autists, here's a gains post from the UK across the pond - listen up because it's pretty incredible, managed to screw over our broker to turn ~£8k into £98k / $128k USD by reading the small print, true u/fuzzyblankeet style. https://preview.redd.it/9mlup18v0q951.png?width=343&format=png&auto=webp&s=aea1393d304d16063d62d54d30cc5be9b23d937a Unfortunately, we don't have options trading, commission free robinhood which crashes, or any other US based degeneracy, but instead we British chaps can trade "CFDs" ie. 'contracts-for-difference', which are essentially naked long / short positions with a 10-20% margin (5-10x leveraged), a 'holding cost' and you could theoretically lose more than your initial margin - sounds like true wallstreetbets autism, right? Well grab a lite beer (or whatever you lite alcoholic chaps drink over there) and strap in for this stuff: So, CMC Markets, a UK based CFD brokerage, wanted to create a West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil 'Spot' product, despite WTI contracts trading in specific monthly expirations which can thus have severe contango effects (as all of you $USO call holders who got screwed know) - this was just a product called "Crude Oil West Texas - Cash", and was pegged to the nearest front-month, but had no expiry date, only a specific holding cost -> already a degenerate idea from their part. So in early April, just before when the WTI May-20 expiry contract 'rolled' at **negative** $-37, the "WTI Cash" was trading at $15 at the time, but the *next* month June-20 expiry was still $30+ we (I am co-running an account with an ex-Goldman colleague of mine) simultaneously entered into a long position on the "WTI - Cash" product, and went short on the "WTI Jun-20 expiry", a pure convergence play. Sure enough, the June-20 tanked the following week, and we made over £35k, realised profits. But meanwhile the May-20 also tanked, and we were down £28k. But rather than realise this loss, we figured we could just hold it until Oil prices recover, and profit on both legs of the trade. However, CMC Markets suddenly realised they are going to lose a lot of money with negative oil prices (Interactive Brokers lost $104m, also retards), so they screwed everyone holding the "WTI - Cash" product trading at $8 at the time, and pegged it to the December 2020 expiry trading at $30, with a 'discount factor' to catch up between the two. https://preview.redd.it/zjjzyahx0q951.png?width=517&format=png&auto=webp&s=9523bab878f06702133631f12c1109081f299f65 Now fellow autists, read the above email and try to figure out what the pure arbitrage is. CMC markets will charge us a 0.61% **per day** holding cost (calculated as the 10x levered value of whatever original margin you put up, so in our case £8k*10x=£80k*0.61% = £500 per day, £1.5k on weekends for extra fun) on our open positions, but also "increase" the position value by 0.61% per day vs. the **previous day's** WTI - Cash value. Got it yet? No? Still retarded? Here's where maths really helps you make tendies:-> If your 'cost' is fixed at 0.61% of your original levered position, but your 'gains' are 0.61% of the previous day's position, then your gains will be ever increasing, whereas your costs are fixed. So we added some extra £££ (as much as we could justifiably put into a degenerate 10x levered CFD account) and tried to see if it works. Long story short, it does. At this point in July we were making **over £1k per day on a £8k initial position*\* regardless where the WTI Dec-20 fwd moved. Unfortunately, eventually CMC markets realised what utter retards they were, and closed down the arbitrage loophole, applying the holding costs to the previous day's value. But not before we turned £8k into £98k, less holding costs. https://preview.redd.it/uh0f8knz0q951.png?width=553&format=png&auto=webp&s=c7e629f72de5aeb4e837ccef44ecae708f058bee Long story short, puts on $CMCX they're total retards, and given what a startup robinhood / other brokerages are, never assume that only they are the ones taking your tendies away, sometimes you can turn the tables on them!
Hi everyone, I have some money maturing later this month, around £800, and I am thinking about using part of that money to get in to stock trading. I have heard of Trading212 (who hasn't), and a friend recommended me Interative Broker. Which one of these would you recommend? If neither, which other ones should I look into?
Just trying to figure out who is best broker to use for share options. I’m not interested in buying options on Forex so HighLow isn’t exactly what I’m after. I use Suncorp Trading for the ASX (looking at changing to something with lower brokerage) and Stake to buy some US shares but it doesn’t seem like either allow options. It looks like you can use ComSec and CMC for share options but the brokerage was around $33-$35. Is there anyone cheaper or better? Bonus points if you aren’t just limited to options on the ASX. I saw a little about Tastyworks and InteractiveBrokers and they seem cheaper. Just curious what most people use before I sign up with one over the other?
Just trying to figure out who is best broker to use for share options. I’m not interested in buying options on Forex so HighLow isn’t exactly what I’m after. I use Suncorp Trading for the ASX (looking at changing to something with lower brokerage) and Stake to buy some US shares but it doesn’t seem like either allow options. It looks like you can use ComSec and CMC for share options but the brokerage was around $33-$35. Is there anyone cheaper or better? Bonus points if you aren’t just limited to options on the ASX. I saw a little about Tastyworks and InteractiveBrokers and they seem cheaper. Just curious what most people use before I sign up with one over the other?
Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. is an execution-only dealer and does not provide investment advice or recommendations regarding the purchase or sale of any securities or derivatives. Registered Office: 1800 McGill College Avenue, Suite 2106, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 3J6, Canada. Website: www.interactivebrokers.ca. Interactive Brokers U.K. Limited Forex Signals: Interactive brokers partners with Zulutrade to provide traders with access to the best forex signal providers in the world. What we think about Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers with 36 years of experience in financial markets. It offers a state-of-art trading platform – Trader Workstation (TWS) that is equipped with ... Interactive Brokers Forex IBKR offers U.S. traders who hold USD as their base currency the ability to trade 23 of the most commonly-held currencies. Like most forex brokers, IBKR charges a small ... Interactive Brokers is a low fee forex broker with 8 entities from Canada to Australia and regulation including FCA, ASIC and FINRA offering the advanced TWS forex trading platform, a range of CFDs from cryptocurrency to ETFs backed by a score of 7.8/10 from 32 Interactive Brokers reviews. Interactive Brokers provides traders 105 currency pairs (e.g., EUR/USD) compared to IG's 93 available pairs. Forex pairs aside, IG offers traders access to 17535 CFDs while Interactive Brokers has 7400 available CFDs, a difference of 10,135. Overall, between IG and Interactive Brokers, IG is the better forex broker. IG Review Interactive ...
Interactive brokers review 2020 - Reviews and ratings Pros & Cons Founded in 1977, Interactive Brokers is one of the oldest online brokerages in the U.S. and... No sabes operar forex desde Interactive Brokers? Aquí te explico en este tutorial el paso a paso de como poder operar forex desde la plataforma TWS de Interactive Borker. ¡Dale al play para ver ... See how easy it is to enter Forex orders and trade with IB. I use the regular TWS/trading workstation just like I do for my stock and ETF trades. This step b... Interactive Brokers LLC is a member of NYSE, FINRA, SIPC. Interactive Brokers provides electronic access to over 100 market destinations worldwide for a wide... Great news for stock and futures traders, Jigsaw daytradr is now available for Interactive Brokers TWS. In this video, we take you through the way that it wo...
