Interactive Brokers FX
Interactive Brokers is another popular forex broker outfit that has gained notoreity throughout the last couple of years. As IB already had a large trader base through its other trading divisions promoting their forex division wasn’t going to be too difficult to get off the ground.
As IB has been known around the world as a deep discount broker offering very competitive commissions to futures, options and stock traders, they have successfully moved their operations to incorporate forex trading.
Some of the highlights about Interactive Brokers Forex division are:
- Can trade the spot forex market PLUS the currency futures market from the same account (in fact, you can trade anything IB offers from the same account – i.e. stocks, options… etc)
- Advanced orders such as Stop Limit, Trailing Stop, Stop, Good Till Cancelled, Good After Time, Good Till Date/Time are allowed
- IB offer a free API to traders who open an account
- Spreads are relatively tight, I’ve noticed spreads of 1 pip between EUR/USD and USD/JPY crosses
Some of the things to be wary of are:
- US$25,000 minimum trade sizes (various for other currencies see here for detail)
- Interactive Brokers has two forex platforms: one for trading (IDEALPRO) and the other for exchanging currency between trading accounts/positions (and trying to understand how to balance a foreign currency position can be rather frustrating if you don’t know anything about foreign exchange) – this second platform is known as IDEAL
- The IB IDEALPRO forex platform has a kludgy feel about it, but this could just be me
- Commissions of 0.2 basis points on trade size value or US$2.50 (whichever is higher)
Interactive Brokers provides the ultimate platform from trading just about anything around the world, by adding a forex arm to their arsenal they sure have provided everything a trader could ever want.
Unfortunately though, there’s a big downside to IB, that isn’t apparent until you’ve opened an account and encountered a problem, and that is: their support sucks. I mean, really sucks. If you do open an account with IB ensure you’ve tested all facets of your trading (including depositing and withdrawing moneys and buying and selling the instruments you’re interested in trading in) before adding large amounts of money with them.
Opening an account at IB is relatively straight forward, and can be done in less than an hour or two.
It is difficult to pass IB up when they offer everything a trader would ever need from one central account, but as with all things cheap be careful of the old axiom – You get what you pay for.
If you’ve used Interactive Brokers FX then I’d like to know how your experience has been with them, please add your comments.
Tags: Currency Secrets Announcements, IB Forex, IBFX, Interactive Brokers, Interactive Brokers LLC
August 8th, 2006 at 3:15 am
I use Ib and have found it as a whole good. The service does take some time depending what your asking but then again their width of servic is huge : You are trading so many instruments so they have to keep on top of alot of issues .
If you can manage to avoid to much of the clunkyness areas ( deposit / withdrawels ) you will get an efficient service. Remember , putting other factors aside cost of trading is a real issue to alot more than I think people realise. I have tested many high trading frequency or scalping systems only to see brokerage really affect the result to a loss or not making it worth while.
Would I recommend them ? Well I use them so that says something . The cost of doing business in my case makes it worth the extra gains I get.
The platform is ok once you get a few hours on it and they have alot of webinars and literature. The SUPPORT is more self serve meaning that your better off reading before going to chat. I believe they are addressing this “service” issue so who knows whats around the corner.
We are curently testing auto trading with the platform so it will be interesting to see how that goes .
Regards
moztrader
December 24th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Using IB for one year with FX and stocks and options. Will try futures in the future.
GREAT VERSATILITY. I use IB for stocks, options, and forex. I love it that at the end of the trading day I can get several forex swing trades in while having most of my funds in other instruments. This is possible because of the higher leverage of FX. With IB it is 50:1, which is less than most regular FX brokers, but certainly adequate.
GREAT AS NON-DEALING DESK. IB is also, and perhaps most importantly, not the counter party to any trade. Most other FX brokers are as I understand it. In real terms, what this means is they are not seeking stops! Amazingly, I have had positions within .5 pip of major support, resistance and I have seen other data feeds jumping all over the place and taking out stops, and IB just sits there. It is very refreshing that when the market stops moving, so do they.
POOR SERVICE. Ditto to what was said above.
GOOD SECURITY. Special security device sent out to large accounts. Can’t even change a password without it!
JUST OKAY GRAPHING. I don’t have a slow machine, but the java graphing consumes my memory like nothing I have seen before. The second I use any indicators on my graph, I have to be careful. Because of this, during news trades, I try to keep only simple moving averages up on the IB chart and use FXCM charts for the other indicators.
I just tried the new FX platform, but still prefer the “clunky” entry mode.
Steve
August 1st, 2007 at 11:31 am
I have been an IB client for years and have nothing but GOOD to say about them…
fills are excellent and FAST… and as for service.. try their live support chat… i never have a problem getting any rare challenge rectified that way..
IB gets 5 stars from me
December 26th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I have been with IB for about a month. so far great service and the MT4 is hands down the best software for FX. I have been
treated like a whale and I’m only a small fish. Tim
August 7th, 2008 at 6:11 am
I have been with IB for ages and have to say, if the platform works and you never need to ask anyone any questions, you may get away with it. As soon as you need to ask anything or sort out a mess of them loosing 20K off your account (which does happen), you will discover that weeks of your time will be eaten, and you will be swimming in endless emails and chats and on-hold systems talking so someone who knows nothing about heling you…
August 24th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Be careful with IB trading currencies, their ideal platform will hit you with a spread of 100 pips and more. Having got caught like this for 183 pips I complained to IB that the spread shown on their bid and offer was not 183 pips but 5. I had placed a stop some 30 pips from entry.
What happens next is about as close to fraud as it can go. IB enter me into a contract at a price and immediately I am 183 pips minus, my stop triggers at minus 183 pips. When I call up to complain I get told that I traded Idea not idea pro (larger contract sizes) and thats my problem $360 dollars gone in seconds. The worst part is that as IB took so long to deal with the problem, they refuse to cancel the order even though its filled outside their agreed margin.
My advise is choose someone else for currency trading unless you like to be fleeced like a sheep. The trading interface sucks and the charting is almost useless. IF you trade indexes or shares you will do better, but do not bother with currencies unless you are going to trade over 25,000 dollar contracks.Good till cancelled orders get cancelled all the time, and you have to constantly check your closing orders are still in place and that they have not been deleted.
Customer service does not exist and if you are outside of the US, then the european help team cannot do anything until the US side comes on line, add to that the errors that their interface reports and you might as well burn your money.
Also
If your account falls below margin you cannot even close your open trades, just great, so they are sure they get what ever little is left in your account.
March 31st, 2009 at 11:36 pm
they suck. no customer help. a complete joke.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
@Mike Haran: Sorry Mike, but you can’t blame IB for your loss. They state clearly on their website that IDEAL is only meant for actual currency exchange and that IDEAL PRO should be used for FOREX trading. How can you blame IB because you didn’t research their products properly?
June 8th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I wonder what Greg Nelson has to offer in his complaint. Greg? Any words of advice or amplification?
July 27th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Ahaan… I will follow.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:27 am
IB is for advanced traders and yes, for people who are going to invest the time to learn which product they should be using (Ideal vs IDEALPRO). There isn’t any major problem with IB at all. It’s just that they are NOT FOR NEWBIES. Everyone was a Newbie once and we shouldn’t bash them. OANDA is an excellent play for those new to Forex to test their strategies. They offer very small trade lots and a great training version (OANDA Game). But only open a IB account when you have the experience and I’d say trading capital in excess of $100K to invest.
February 19th, 2010 at 3:58 am
Not sure I agree with the “sucks” opinion on IB’s service. It’s not full service but as their name suggests they’ve tried to automate all client service needs via the internet browser. I have a family account with gives allows sub accounts. So I can have IRA and other accounts there. Do one trade and apportion it amongst the accounts. Family accounts have a special number they call for service which has always been very prompt. It costs a little extra for the sub accounts … $10 per month per account and you need an extra account to be a master which should not affect you if you are actually trading forex since these fees are then waived. However, perhaps I’m reinforcing the opinion that you get what you pay for since I’m paying slightly more and getting more.
My beef would be with the datafeed. It only allows so many requests within a 5 min period. So if I’m popping between pairs a lot and building charts it will occassional time out. Accordingly, I’m considering augmenting my IB via NinjaTrader setup with a 3rd party datafeed such as eSignal which is expensive but necessary for moderate day trading.
August 30th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
well, you can also earn a lot from currency trading if you know that ins and outs of that trade:,’