BankFiesta.com

IB or the Interactive Brokers LLC is an online discount broker that is making waves in the business today. The company consistently gets above average marks as a software broker, plus it is one of the stems of the Barron’s that has very competitive trade costs. Timber Hill LLC is a subsidiary of the Interactive Brokers successful in being one of the top market makers of exchange listed equity and index options all over the world. Currently, Interactive Brokers is listed at the NASDAQ stock exchange under IBKR symbol.

A lot of active traders and investors support the Interactive Brokers because of the fact that they provide top of the line, no-nonsense trading platform at very competitive commission rates. One of the main reasons why IB receives such high praises is due to the Universal account. Traders do not have to mess with different account types when dealing with varying financial instruments such as stocks, futures and options.

Traders who are new in handling the Trader Workstation (TWS) trading interface might at first be turned off by the lack of hand-holding involved in the process. As the trader gets the hang of using the TWS system, he or she will surely not trade it for any system out there. The TWS system lets the traders go in and out of volatile markets quickly and efficiently. The Interactive Brokers does not completely throw out the TWS system into the public without prior preparation on how to use the system. The company offers functional demo version of the TWS to get the traders familiar with its usage. There is also a papertrading account that can be opened before going “live” in the real market so traders an practice their trading strategy with the use of TWS.

What the Interactive Brokers offers is convenience and efficiency in its system. It allows the traders to trade equities, options, futures, exchange-traded funds or ETFs, bonds and foreign exchange in a single account and currency. It is up to the preference of the trader as to what currency he or she would like to use. All trading are made possible due to the powerful single interface feature of the TWS system. Usually, brokers are required to maintain separate accounts for their different transactions, but in Interactive Brokers, one Universal account is enough.

Another great feature of IB is that its Application Programming Interface is open for use of other applications. This adds functionality to the system for a lot of third party add-ons can be integrated with the IB’s Trader Workstation such as the Medev Quotetracker. It is a valuable data-feed that helps chart the markets.

Other third party options you can use as add-ons to your IB system are ButtonTrader, Bracket Trader and Ninja Trader. The said applications improves the entry speed and accuracy of the trader when it comes to high liquidity stocks and day trading futures. Due to the popularity of such tools to traders, the Interactive Brokers see it as an advantage for them and their users to improve its BookTrader and Depth of Market or DOM features. BookTrader is highly valuable to traders when it comes to looking at the market depth in relation to stop loss orders and profit targets. One click of the mouse button will automatically configure the BookTrader to change positions whether you want to enter, exit or position yourself in reverse.

The IB’s data-feed is considered low cost yet it is robust enough not to be affected during “fast markets”. This is where traditional data vendors namely the eSignal, IQFeed and QCharts lag behind. This is not an implication that the IB’s data is 100% perfect. Like other systems, it experiences down time also. It just goes to show that the IB possess hardy data-feed that is suitable even for day trading fast instruments like the ES or e-mini S&P 500 Futures.

The only down point of the IB system is that the data feed is not true tick data. It gathers the data and consolidates it before sending it out to the users. Nevertheless, this will not be an issue if you are not utilizing tick charts.

The trading tools available at the disposal of the traders when they join the Interactive Brokers are the Trader Workstation, Mobile Trader, Web Trader and API Software.