Interactive Brokers Review 2022

Interactive Brokers review
Interactive Brokers Fees Explained

• Interactive Brokers withdrawal fees varies on payment method
• Interactive Brokers does charge a fee for inactive accounts.
• Interactive Brokers doesn't charge deposit fees.

Brokers offer state of the art online trading platforms, mobile trading apps, financial research tools and educational resources. For a brokerage to maintain these services and earn revenue as a company. Brokers may charge clients various trading fees that you need to be aware of as they may affect your bottom line.

How Interactive Brokers Fees Compare Against Other Brokers

Interactive Brokers Minimum Deposit

Interactive Brokers require a minimum deposit of 10000 GBP/USD/EUR when opening an Interactive Brokers trading account.

A minimum deposit is the minimum amount of money required by Interactive Brokers to open a new online brokerage account with them.

Don't be scared off by brokers like Interactive Brokers charging a minimum deposit to open a trading account. Brokers that charge higher minimum deposits often offer additional premium services on their platforms that are not available for free on other platforms.

Brokers that offer lower minimum deposits are generally geared towards a more mainstream audience that do not require some of the more advanced features and research tools.

Brokers that do not charge minimum deposits do so usually to attract new customers. They have to make returns some way, so transaction commissions and other trading fees may be higher with a low minimum deposit account.

Brokers that require a larger minimum deposit amount usually offer a greater range of trading features on their platforms. These brokers often have more in depth technical analysis and research tools and better risk management features.

As more and more online trading platforms have entered the market, minimum deposit requirements to open a live trading account have gone down as an increasing number of brokers compete for new clients.

Depending on the type of trading account you opt for some brokers require a minimum deposit as high as 6500 GBP/USD. Some brokers can go as high as 10,000 GBP/USD.

Interactive Brokers Withdrawal Fees

Interactive Brokers withdrawal fees vary depending on your selected withdrawal payment method.

Each broker has their own specific withdrawal rules on how your funds can be withdrawn from your trading accounts.

This is because each brokerage firm will have different withdrawal methods and each payment provider may have differing transfer processing fees, processing times and a potential currency conversion fee. The Conversion fee is dependant on your base currency, your receiving currency and your payment provider.

For example Interactive Brokers allows you to withdraw your funds to Bank Transfer, American Express, Cheque or Check.

Interactive Brokers Inactivity Fees

Interactive Brokers does charge a fee for inactive accounts.

An account inactivity fee is a fee charged to the registered brokerage client.

Brokers may have certain trading activity requirements that under the terms and conditions of the accounts and clients may have to fulfill.

If a clients trading account does not have any buying and selling over a period of time as dictated by the broker an inactivity fee may be due.

Inactivity fees are not specific to online trading accounts. Many financial service companies may charge inactivity fees. Please check on the brokers website and make sure you are aware of and are happy with all the services and fees you may be charged.

If you are no longer using your trading account close it with the brokers customer support. And make sure you have a confirmation that any remaining fees are not due.

Depending on the type of account you have signed up for you can only be charged an inactivity fee under certain circumstances. As part of a brokers regulation they are required to clearly disclose any inactivity fees.

Some brokerage firms may charge inactivity fees as compensation for maintaining your account on their expensive trading platforms, in an attempt to claw back revenue for the lack of commission fees from your trading.

Interactive Brokers Deposit Fees

Interactive Brokers does not charge deposit fees. Although bank / 3rd party merchant fees may apply.

You must always review deposit fees as some brokers may charge a fee when you deposit funds from your payment method to your trading account. This is because the payment method which you use to fund your account may accrue a fee.

The fee may be a fixed fee when you deposit a specific fiat currency to your account. For example fees are known to be high when depositing funds from a credit card. This is if your broker accepts funding your account via a credit card.

Interactive Brokers Commission Fees

Interactive Brokers does charge commission on CFD instruments.

A broker may charge a commission fee as a service charge for facilitating the buying and selling of financial assets through your trading account.

A brokerage may make most of their revenue from charging registered traders a commission fee on client transactions.

Commission fees can differ depending on the trading type, financial asset type and what level of trading account you have.

Broker commissions are charged if the brokerage fulfills an order, cancels an order or modifies and order on your behalf.

If a market order is not fulfilled by your brokerage usually no commission is charged.

Be aware that if your order is modified or canceled, your brokerage may charge a commission fee.

Interactive Brokers review
Trading on Interactive Brokers web platforms and other applications

Interactive Brokers offer a user-friendly custom trading platform, available as a browser based web application. If you would rather see a comparison of MT4 brokers, you can so here.

Interactive Brokers also offer mobile apps for Android and iOS, making it easier to keep an eye on and execute your trades while you’re on the move.

See Interactive Brokers's platforms

Is the Interactive Brokers Trading Platform Secure?

Interactive Brokers safeguards the personal information of its clients through SSL encryption in its PC and mobile platforms. Interactive Brokers also urges its clients through its web platform to always look for the SSL security sign (a lock sign) on the browser while operating Interactive Brokers.

Interactive Brokers Trading Platform Options

Interactive Brokers does not offer the MetaTrader 4 (MT4), MetaTrader 5 (MT5) or cTrader trading platforms.

Interactive Brokers offer an their own custom trading platform developed and tested in house. The Interactive Brokers trading platform allows traders to track their portfolios, track the current markets, locate trade ideas and place trades.

The Interactive Brokers platform allows traders to filter the financial marketplace for trade opportunities that match a criteria.

With Interactive Brokers you can look for and examine opportunities with actionable research and stock evaluations. Get streaming real-time information on the Interactive Brokers platform including news and quotes. Discover possible trades with the strong charting tools found with Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers is available as downloadable applications or online through the cloud. Monitor your orders with Interactive Brokers and receive breaking news in your positions.

Interactive Brokers Trading benefits

• Allows scalping
• Allows hedging
• Offers STP

Interactive Brokers Trading Accounts Offered

Below we give an overview on the account types that Interactive Brokers offer. Whatever you are looking to trade the varying Interactive Brokers account types will be able to provide you with what you need.

• Demo account
• Mini account
• Standard account
• ECN account
• STP account
• Managed account

Can I try Interactive Brokers?

Interactive Brokers offer a demo account so you can try before putting down funding payments. Open a practice account & learn to trade

Losses can exceed deposits

Interactive Brokers withdrawal and funding methods

Please note that the list of Interactive Brokers payment methods below depend on the Interactive Brokers Entity and the Clients Country of Residence.

All available Interactive Brokers payment methods available to you can be found in your Interactive Brokers members area checked on the Interactive Brokers website.

Interactive Brokers offer the below funding payment methods. You can use any of the below deposit options if available in your region. learn more about Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers Payment Methods

• Interactive Brokers accepts Bank Transfer
• Interactive Brokers accepts American Express
• Interactive Brokers accepts Cheque or Check

How can I start trading with Interactive Brokers?

When opening a trading account with Interactive Brokers, you will need to sign up here. Once you have received your login details by email, submitted your identification documents for account validation, and made a deposit; the next step is to download the trading platform of your choice. You can find detailed guidance on Interactive Brokers trading platforms here. You will need to provide some basic documentation to prove your identity as part of Interactive Brokers onboarding and normal KYC identity checks. These checks are standard practice and help Interactive Brokers provide a safe financial environment for their 10,000 users.

Losses can exceed deposits

Performing trades with Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers do not have set minimum and maximum trade requirements. They may vary depending on the account, trader and the instrument. The maximum trade requirements vary depending on the trader and the instrument. As Interactive Brokers offer ECN and STP execution, you can expect very tight spreads with more transparency over the price you‘re paying to execute your trades.

Interactive Brokers are one of very few brokers that claim to have no requotes, so you don't have to worry about slippage (your trades being ordered at a different price to what you executed them at).

As with most brokers, margin requirements do vary depending on the instruments.

Limit Risk When Trading with Interactive Brokers Stop Loss, Interactive Brokers Stop Limit Orders

A stop-loss order is an order placed with a broker like Interactive Brokers to buy/sell once the stock reaches a certain price. A stop-loss is designed to limit a traders loss on a security position.

Most traders need to use stop losses to protect themselves from huge risk unless the trade is hedged against another trade or the trader is not using leverage. Circumstances differ depending on the trade and the markets.

Education Resources at Interactive Brokers

To trade effectively with Interactive Brokers, it's important to get a have a good understanding of the Interactive Brokers trading tools and the markets. Make sure you make full use of all education tools. This includes eduction tools with Interactive Brokers and externally.

Interactive Brokers offer a good selection of educational resources. Take your time, learn how the financial markets move. Take the time to learn how your trading platform works. Make buy/sell trades, learn how to take advantage of global trading times and most importantly learn how to mitigate and manage investing risk.

Having an analytical approach may be a good way to approach trading with Interactive Brokers.

Take time to look around the Interactive Brokers platforms and train yourself to think more systematically and logically about the markets. It's a new skill-set for many, but it is what the market requires of you.

Customer Support at Interactive Brokers

As part of our Interactive Brokers review we review customer service options, response times and Interactive Brokers trading platform problem resolution effectiveness. Interactive Brokers support a wide range of languages including English, Francais, Deutsch, Espanol, Italiano, Ruskiyy, Mandarin, Cantonese, Nihongo.

Interactive Brokers have a triple AAA grade support and customer service rating because they offer a wide range of languages, live chat, and email support.

Interactive Brokers customer service support multiple languages from all over the world. Having a broker that can hire people from various locations in the world who can better communicate with you in your local language is a huge advantage well trying to deal with issues.

Your customer service experience with Interactive Brokers has to be a positive one for you to effectively trade the financial markets on the Interactive Brokers platform. Interactive Brokers should make sure all of your questions are answered and your Interactive Brokers platform issues solved. When a Interactive Brokers customer has any queries regarding Interactive Brokers the Interactive Brokers customer support team should take these issues seriously and offer a quick and effective solution. Interactive Brokers have a great client support team, which is why we have rated their customer service highly.

Livechat Support at Interactive Brokers

We tested the Interactive Brokers live chat and it works well. We sent messages to Interactive Brokers livechat through their app and website and recieved a response within 3 minutes. Its important you test the Interactive Brokers chat service yourself. a responsive chat service from Interactive Brokers gives a great support experience to Interactive Brokers chat service users. Its much better than waiting days for an email.

We tested communicating with Interactive Brokers support in multiple languages in multiple countries. The Interactive Brokers help center where able to quickly resolve our customer issues.

Email Support at Interactive Brokers

We sent several emails to Interactive Brokers and answer times overall were excellent. The fastest response from Interactive Brokers was less than 2 minutes and the slowest response was 3 hours. Support response times may vary for you with Interactive Brokers, but this was our experience sending 10 emails at varying times.

The team resolved and answered our queries. Overall very good email support from Interactive Brokers.

Phone Support at Interactive Brokers

We called Interactive Brokers and the call was answered very quickly. The call was answered in less than 1 minutes.

The Interactive Brokers phone support team were able to successfuly answer our questions and issues over the phone. We tested the multilingual Interactive Brokers team by calling in varying languages. Interactive Brokers made an effort to make sure our queries were answered.

Overall great phone support from Interactive Brokers.

See how Interactive Brokers Support Compares Against Other Brokers

What you will need to open an account with Interactive Brokers

As Interactive Brokers is regulated by Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), every new client must pass a few basic compliance checks to ensure that you understand the risks of trading and are allowed to trade. When you open an account, you'll likely be asked for the following, so it's good to have these handy:

• Be aware that the expiration date of Proof of address document for different entities under Interactive Brokers Brand may be different.
• A scanned colour copy of your passport, driving license or national ID
• A utility bill or bank statement from the past three months showing your address

You'll also need to answer a few basic compliance questions to confirm how much trading experience you have, so it's best to put aside at least 5 minutes or so to complete the account opening process.

While you might be able to explore Interactive Brokers's platform straight away, it's important to note that you won't be able to make any trades until you pass compliance, which can take up to several days, depending on your situation.

To start the process of opening an account with Interactive Brokers you can visit the Interactive Brokers trading platform here.
Losses can exceed deposits
You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

CFDs are leveraged products and can result in significant losses, excess of your invested capital. All trading involves risk. Only risk capital you're prepared to lose. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
This post is for educational purposes and should not be considered as investment advice. All information collected from https://www.interactivebrokers.com/ on December 01, 2022.

Interactive Brokers review written by Andrew Blumer and Mark Hansen