Interactive brokers are scammers. Stay away from these shady brokers. They will deactivate your account login just to have you call their customer support number. Instead, when you call them, they attempt to sell you add-ons these you don't even need. Horrible experience. Much rather work with a real broker instead of these scammers. Buyer be aware.

Interactive Brokers has best execution and lowest commission / spreads. They are good at this. I only trade futures even currencies and thier commssion is lowest that help me make good scalp trades. Thier platform and customer service is okay or worse sometimes. But trust me, in trading execution and commission counts, anything else is just nice to have but not necessary.

First of all, these guys have no regard for their customers. They failed to exercise options worth $8000, supposedly as risk prevention. If you understand how giving away your money somehow protects your account, you are smarter than me. Note, I am not talking about market priced liquidations. I am talking about giving away options of considerable value, and getting nothing in return. Second, the Web Trader product is completely unreliable. I have witnessed it change terms of my order entry on its own. Further, the site constantly becomes unresponsive. Third, the company recently adopted a policy of "preemptive liquidation". This means that even if you are in margin compliance, they might still liquidate you if they think you MAY not be in margine compliance the next day. This is bad. Worse, if you call Interactive Brokers and ask them which positions they are concerned about, or which positions may be liquidated, they can't tell you. IB engages in this practice even while claiming it cannot accurately predict future margin requirements. In fact, more times than not, in my personal experience, IB's pre-emptive liquidations have not only failed to reduce margin requirements, but actually served to INCREASE them. Fourth, after putting up with this cr** for too long, i tried to transfer my assets to another broker. Interactive Brokers was not cooperative with this process. There are a host of other reasons to not use Interactive Brokers, and i will add to them at a future time. This is my first blog EVER. I have nothing to gain from writing it, but i do hope to prevent others from making the same mistake I did by signing up with this horror of a brokerage firm.

All the bad reviewers are blaming IB for their bad trades. Look at their spreads man. Nobody can come close, not even Oanda. They do not trade against you. They did not get to be that big by deception and fraud. They are exceedingly good at what they do: Execution at bare bones prices. That is their game, and their only game, and they at the top of it.

I read the comments on Interactive Brokers and was shocked. I have had excellent (not perfect) service with any inquiry made on trades, commissions, fees, etc. In general, I have had no major problems. Their platform takes some learning time but works fine; their margin rates are the lowest I can find; they need more documentation for their platform and the format is awful. The firm is rated best by Barron's. I can't believe the responses here.