Why Interactive Brokers is a Brokerage Firm You Can Rely On
With over 40 years worth of industry tenure, Interactive Brokers had gathered a strong client portfolio that is unfretted by negative reviews.
Preliminary findings gathered by the review team had rendered positive results for the broker, thus building an image for the broker already familiar to the trading industry: that it is a trustworthy and legitimate firm.
As this is the case, the review team only focused on enumerating the benefits of having to trade with the broker that delves into the following facets:
- The regulatory bodies that the firm follows
- The trading instruments made accessible by the firm to its clients
- The trading platforms that it offers
- The perks that a client can get when opening an account with Interactive Brokers
About Interactive Brokers
Probably the longest serving brokerage firm, Interactive Brokers was established back in 1978 and had since provided electronic trading platforms to over millions of its clients across 200 countries.
Given its industry existence, Interactive Brokers had enlisted the services of several Financial Authorities that sanction all their trading activities. The firm is subject to the stringent guidelines of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Interactive Brokers is also a registered entity under the Futures Commission Merchant (“FCM”) which makes it subservient to the Commodity Exchange Act and the rules implemented by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the National Futures Association (NFA).
On top of these, Interactive Brokers also takes cues from a number of commodity exchanges which they are a member of.
With these regulatory bodies declared as the guiding entities and authorities that Interactive Brokers strictly operates under, it is easy to assume that Interactive Brokers is a legitimate brokerage. This could easily be affirmed through their existence of 42 years.
But of course, looking into their specific services should take precedence in this review so that the readers could get an idea of what they should exactly expect should they trade with the brokers.
Offers and Services
Accessible Trading Instruments
Interactive Brokers offers a wide array of trading instruments. What’s good about the firm is that the firm actually listens to customer demand and feedback. As this is the case, its offerings accommodate what the trading public desires to trade.
Back in April 2020, Interactive Brokers widened its scope to include Mutual Funds which numbered to 26,000 as of writing from 285 fund families.
However, the firm does not offer cryptocurrencies apart from the Bitcoin futures.
Through Interactive Brokers, gives access to multiple markets namely, Long and Short stocks – the firm allows traders to borrow 23,000, Penny Stocks, Mutual Funds (no transaction fee for Pro Clients), Corporate Bonds, Municipal Bonds, Treasury Bonds, CD Bonds, International Bonds, Options, Futures, Future Options, Robo-advisory, Interactive Advisors, Foreign Currency Pairs, Shares, stocks, IPOs, warrants, and stock futures, just to mention a few.
The Perks of Opening An Account With Interactive Brokers
All clients who pass the preliminary requirements are eligible to portfolio margining.
The clients are also given the opportunity to earn further through the revenue that the firm gets from the stock loan program. An equal division of 50/50 is provided, making it fair game for the client who had only borrowed stocks.
Zero interests are up for the first $10,000 in any client account. For clients with more than $100,000 in their accounts, they are given 0.6% over their existent $10,000 within their accounts.
Interests are compensated for automatically on qualifying cash balances.
Clients are given the chance to set an account-wide default for the reinvestment of dividends on qualifying stocks.
In addition to these, the firm is able to increase the trader’s profit through a myriad of ways, one of them being the price improvement scheme which sees the attainment of an average of $0.43 per 100 shares that the clients are able to trade.
Another venue of earning would be Interactive Brokers’ payment for order flow in which the firm receives an average of lower than 0.001 cents per share once payment is made for order flow in equities that are listed within the 3rd quarter of the year 2019.
The firm gets an average of $0.10 for every contract. This is noteworthy in that most traders receive higher on contracts.
Offered Trading Platforms
Interactive Brokers offers 3 iterations of its trading platform.
The first of its platforms is the Client Portal which is the web application of the firm’s proprietary platform. It is seen as simple and intuitive in that it has a neat interface that allows for the access of all its tools like the traders’ portfolio performance, account metrics, positions, various notifications, and FYIs integral to the traders’ everyday activity.
The desktop application for Interactive Brokers is called Trader Station. Here, research, news, and market data, order types, risk management techniques, and paper trading are among the accessible features to the trader.
Traders are also given the capability of monitoring their trades through the Interactive Brokers mobile application which effectively reflects all Trader Workstations features.
All these platforms are considered reliable by the review team as these allow easy and real-time execution of trades.
Trade with Interactive Brokers Today!
With the points discussed above, it is easy to see why Interactive Brokers is a viable option for a brokerage that both novice and seasoned traders can enlist with. The instruments that the firm gives access to and the industry tenure alone make for good trading conditions.
Ultimately, the conditions that are created and fostered by Interactive Traders allow its clients to build solid and well-rounded invested portfolios.
