IBKR
Interactive Brokers Group Inc
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I once read somewhere that major brokers will deal with the issue of physical delivery on futures expirations, for a fee, but can't find it again. (self.investing)
Interactive Brokers closing account, won't let me deposit funds to avoid liquidation
I had my best trading day all year and in a very long time but have no one to talk to about it
Blackrock just added up to their $LUMN position
+8 million/2500% gain in 2 months, +20 million/5000% since April 2023
No reimbursement policy if hacked - IBKR Canada
Rates cut will send BETR to the moon (Better Home & Finance Holding Co)
If you want to day trade professionally, it's ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that you trade with a professional platform that charges options fees.
Would you guys have handled it differently if you were in the same situation?
Would you guys have handled it differently if you were in the same situation? Sharing my investment experience with bad risk management strategy.
Worst brokerage platforms errors you have seen?
Worst brokerage platforms errors you have seen?
$COIN / Bitcoin ratio is stupid. Long BTC short $COIN
Just got approved for Options Trading on IBKR
USA: Options for automatically moving small amounts of excess funds from a bank into a money market mutual fund or similar? (is this "sweep"?)
Only 700 shares available for shorting on IBKR
A bullish case (w/DD) for Fisker FSR (SI: 41%)
Taking advantage of high lending rate and dividend yield
Lending out ABR and securing 15% annualized return
What’s the point of selling naked calls if you need to have the cost amount of shares regardless?
Interactive Brokers not filling orders, filling orders above limit price
HEAVY CAUTION!!! Closing a Short Put Option deep ITM...
Questions about bonds, mainly US treasuries
$LMND - Potential Gamma Squeeze
I want the same Column in Interactive Brokers to help my option game.
Price of Crude Oil vs Middle East death & injury tolls as reported by CNN
ITM put options expiring, but not enough cash in my account to purchase them
Last 35k left and looking for strategies to 10x in a short time
How is MooMoo? Recommendation for Canadian trading platforms.
CHEATSHEET: The Basics of Short Squeezes - A 3-min Read
Starting a fund partnerhip. How to go abiut it?
Must US brokers send an FYI about market orders to their clients who placed a market order in the past month by law?
is there a broker that allows automating weekly put writing?
Why does Fidelity have such terrible Treasury bond spreads and yields vs. market?
TD Ameritrade is beginning to charge users USD$50/month maintenance fees
Td Ameritrade to Schwab: how's order execution quality in Schwab?
Which free bond scanners(with ratings) are out there and which ones do you use?
Investing from Switzerland: IBKR vs Trading212 vs Degiro
Help finding spiked up/down stocks
Capital gains / Dividend tax on taxable MMF's for a foreign investor
Which online brokerages should I consider?
Can I get a count? DRS Price Hike: Would You Change Brokers?
How do American investors directly access foreign markets?
How are brokers like Lightspeed or Dash Prime for portfolio margin buying power?
Cost of options contracts:- AAPL / NVDA comparison
Mentions
I like Webull because of the Turbotrade option. I scalp so having the buy/sell buttons with no confirmation required is a dream. IBKR offers something similar but IBKR Desktop is laggy and TWS is ancient. Still considering swapping, though.
IBKR had a lot of cancelling orders issue yesterday.
You didn't say your trading volume. If it is high enough, you can get a frequent trader id from CBOE, and I think tws or client portal will let you configure to have that on your CBOE orders. That can help on the exchange side. But it won't get past the bs IBKR commissions where each complex order leg is billed as its own order. Absolute bs. If that's critical, then it seems like RH offers lower commissions, Fidelity offers lower total cost by not passing through exchange fees, and tasty offers capped multi lot order commissions (unsure how/if that applies to CBOE products, though) Also keep in mind for a full service broker, IBKR has low futures fees, so some strategies might be relatively economical using futures products instead of index securities.
Tasty is probably where I'd look first, followed by E-trade and IBKR. Tradestation is another one but I have no experience with them.
Yeah, having a backup is a must, especially if you’re trading 0DTE. IBKR is probably the most common alternative — solid execution, lower fees (depending on volume), and no forced auto-close like Robinhood. Not the best UI, but reliable. ThinkorSwim is also good for analysis and execution, especially for options chains and liquidity, though fills can vary. Honestly for 0DTE the most important thing isn’t the platform, it’s: * execution quality * no forced liquidation * and being able to manage spreads properly That’s why most people move away from Robinhood pretty quickly. I trade SPX 0DTE spreads as well and share some setups + tools I use if you want to compare platforms/approach: r/GEXOptionsTrading
This is why you only gamble 0dte on Fidelity and IBKR
AS mentioned, IBKR won't lower your commissions, but If that's your only concern, the lowest rates when trading SPX options will be with Fidelity. They won't pass on the extra CBOE exchange fees.
Yeah, IBKR *can* reduce fees, but usually it’s more about **volume than account size**. With \~500 trades you might have a case, especially if you’re consistent — worth reaching out and asking, worst case they say no. That said, $1.5/contract on SPX is pretty standard unless you’re doing serious size. Fees are just part of the game with 0DTE, which is why structure matters a lot (premium collected vs commissions). One thing that helped me was focusing on: * fewer but higher quality setups * making sure the premium justifies the fees * avoiding overtrading Otherwise commissions will slowly eat the edge. I trade SPX 0DTE spreads as well and share some setups/results if you want to compare approaches: r/GEXOptionsTrading
I had issues with IBKR too
At $30k, IBKR probably won't lower your fees. They usually only do that for big accounts with millions of dollars. Since SPX has a built-in exchange fee of about $0.60, you can't get much lower than $1.50 anyway. You might save more money by switching to a broker like tastytrade that has a limit on how much they charge per trade.
They won’t. IBKR has a tiered model that is a function of monthly contracts you trade. https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/pricing/commissions-options.php
The brokers would have to either integrate their own or partner with a company. Not the individual using ai on their own then accessing the broker. I agree with you to not trust ai with information like that unless it’s a company partnering with it to guarantee security. And ya but to physically do 500 trades everytime you deposit some money would be time consuming. Unless you have an algo trading account but the big brokers that most people use don’t such as bank brokers, IBKR, robinhood, Webull, e-trade, fidelity, vanguard, Schwab, etc.
Foreign investors frequently utilize US-based online brokerages, with Interactive Brokers (IBKR) being a top choice. IBKR provides the flexibility to invest in US markets via European-listed ETFs, such as VUAA (S&P 500) and VWRA (FTSE All-World). These ETFs are highly advantageous for non-US investors due to the heavy tax implications of direct US investments: Estate Tax: The US imposes a steep 40% estate tax on US-situated assets, with a meager $60,000 exemption for non-resident aliens. Dividend Withholding Tax: A standard 30% tax is applied to dividends, and many countries lack tax treaties with the US to mitigate this. By opting for Irish-domiciled (European-listed) ETFs, investors can significantly reduce their tax burden. Many European countries hold favorable tax treaties with the US, often reducing the internal dividend withholding tax to 15%. Furthermore, because these funds are legally domiciled outside the US, they are not subject to the 40% US estate tax.
TD Ameritrade is also a popular platform among foreigners, but unfortunately it was acquired by Charles Schwab. Charles Schwab doesn't offer automatic tax refunds for US Treasury bond ETFs, and filling out US tax refund forms is very troublesome for foreigners. Therefore, many people go to IBKR.
Its 0.25% on IBKR. Pltr is about 2% of the nasdaq. That means for a million dollar portfolio, you need to hedge 20k. 0.25% of 20k is 50 dollars a year. If you cant pay 50 bucks on a year on a million dollar portfolio then why even bother making this thread. It IS that simple.
I will reach there soon. I have been doing it for a year now. Seems to be working fine. I recently switched to IBKR so it only shows graph since the transfer happened
I don't know how I snuck shares short in. I spammed market shorts for hours and got 50 shares short at around 250. IBKR says no shorts available now. I was doing some research and apparently centerpoint has the best short location, not sure if they have any there.
Depends. Fractional rates? Many have it (IBKR, Robinhood, Webull). Credit card and cash sweep? Robinhood is better with incredible rates (3% cashback). Fidelity is good but the majority of my active investment is in IBKR. Fidelity charges something like 12% for margin rates while IBKR is only half that. I would recommend you check other brokerages out. Even if you end up not liking it you can still get some pretty amazing signup bonuses.
My portfolio management strategies would be nothing short of insanity without their basket portfolio feature so they have me locked down as a result. If I were to leave, my only other options would be M1Finance or Interactive Brokers(with some coding on my part) if I were to keep going with my strategy, because managing 70 stock positions is absolutely bonkers otherwise. The basket feature aside though I prefer IBKR, Schwab, or Tasty for active trading. Fidelity's handling of options is just not intuitive at all to me.
I am using IBKR and find them really good.
Did competition catch up? I have Fidelity for my 401k and the GUI is nowhere near as intuitive or nice. I can’t imagine other brokers being any better, like E Trade. But idk, it’s a genuine question. I do like IBKR though
Sure would be nice to place some trades rn on the futures but my POS broker locked me out with an IP ban or something and no 24/7 customer support. I didnt even attempt multiple logins today, I never closed the app. Tasty trade is kinda pissing me off. If It wasn't such an adjustment period in between switching brokerages ide move to schwab or IBKR
I'm doing the BWB for SPX, it found its easier if you buy a normal butterfly at a very cheap price first, then alter the outer wing for a credit roll. As the liquidity of butterfly is higher than a whole lot of broken wings, sometime it can result a huge bid/ask spread, but a normal butterfly + a credit roll is much easier in that case. However, I use IBKR, sometime after my rolling the spread of whole lot and position P/L will become a massy, which I will need to track on my own record, do you have any better way to manage the entry and exit? I'm thinking, might be buy a bear put spread and sell a bull put separately will help me better track the profit and close the leg when I need
Moving all my stocks from Merrill to IBKR. Probably the only move I'm making
Ok today is the day I realized IBKR and my banking apps struggle to render humongous price changes at such short intervals
IBKR has overnight trading through the Blue Ocean ATS, that might be what you're looking for. I think you need a margin account for it though.
>Another question is liquidity. Projects say assets are tradable anytime, but that only works if there are enough buyers and sellers. This is one of those solutions looking for a problem. Here is the thing there is no technological reason we cannot trade assets 24x7 There is a good reason why we don't WANT this. To get the most fair price to both the buyer or sellers you want a market with lots of people in that market buying/selling stock at 2:30 AM Monday morning is not going to get the buyer or seller the best price because most people are in bed and not trading stock Also unless I am being kidnapped or something, I see no real world reason I would need to liquidate stock or buy/sell assets at 2:30 AM Monday morning? And if you really want to you can, there already is after hours trading, futures market , I you are so inclined you can trade on foreign exchanges and its not all that hard to do , open an IBKR account and you can trade on American , European , Asian , exchanges that are almost open 24 hours somewhere Its sort of a solution that no one needs and is already solved.
Okay but that may be a hallucination, and the way you ask is also very important. It isn’t nefariously trying to mislead you, or it’s being told to do so to harm you. Get a spreadsheet with several examples of the problem solved and show that to it. Then tell it what the problem you are trying to solve is and ask it to make a program for you. If you feed it an API key from IBKR that program can check for you every time you ask it.
I ended up getting first 30mins after market open, and expirations between 25 to 45 DTE. filtering by ATM contracts + 3 strikes for OTM PUTs + 3 strikes for OTM CALLs. Averaged implied vol for a contract given that period. And then average weighted contracts by vega (also tried by 1/strike\^2 like in VIX calculation) I have about 2 years and 3 months of option market data and greeks. I'm getting similar IV and IV Rank as IBKR
Currently the best one in this energy crisis is AADI and ITMG. They are export thermal coal companies. They are cheap, profitable and 100% guaranteed to have their net income explode this year thanks to Iran war. Do note though that you cannot buy Indonesia stock directly through IBKR. Must do extra steps and register in brokers approved by Indonesia govt
IBKR isn’t perfect either. None are.
This is how IBKR clients beat the S&P500
Yeah it takes a couple days in my experience for SPX cash settling to take effect. I also use IBKR. If you check back in a little while it’ll update with the cash settled profits
Just use IBKR for S&P ETFs or QQQ or ACWD.
As a fellow TD user: How often do you trade? TD is robbing you blind in fees if it's often. I use IBKR for much better fees and trading permissions.
If you're in Jordan I'd care more about broker access and fund domicile than the exact ticker. A lot of non-US investors end up using UCITS ETFs through IBKR or a local broker, then keeping it broad instead of trying to hand-pick "neutral" countries.
I sometimes wonder why people use etrade instead of IBKR or fidelity, vanguard, schwab, etc. Etrade is a small guy...
IBKR, I'm assuming moomoo allows overnight for it too but I could be wrong.
https://preview.redd.it/plusnuyo23qg1.jpeg?width=1206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb178055fcf73e1d5acbd2de23894e93d6965d8d From -65% to almost break even (just 8K more to recover from IBKR account)
Thank you very much for your analysis on this. I am pretty new to trading spx credit spreads so am eager to learn as much as I can. Your comment about RH vs IBKR fills really caught my eye because I am aware of the worse fills you get when you get "free" trades but my biggest issue is that the UI on RH works best for me when trying to execute trades on my phone. I use Fidelity for my IRA but using their mobile app to execute trades is painful. I haven't looked much at IBKR, but do you have any experience using their app to execute trades?
Merrill Edge has a bunch of options restricted right now so they can't be traded on their UI. Have to call to trade them. I'm going to call and ask they lift those off my account. This broker seriously pisses me off. First I had to fill out special paperwork to be allowed to trade stuff like USO and it cost me missing out on the oil run from 60 to 100 plus. Now they're fucking my ability to make plays on shit like PL and RKLB for some total random reasoning. Seriously fuck theses guys If I can't get some satisfaction I think I'm moving everything to IBKR or something. Tldr; big mad
I disagree and imo the biggest driver of selling recently has been margin calls and specifically leveraged crypto trading. IBKR reporting that margin loans, which increased through almost every month in 2025, are now flat since Dec.
man i was trying to buy TTF calls yesterday but my retarded ass couldnt get it to load on IBKR does anyone know the ticker for the futures options lol, TFM?
I think he is saying make sure whatever you received is really from IBKR. IOW, if you login to your IBKR account and the message is in whatever inbox IBKR has you are ok. But if you received an email or text make sure that is really from IBKR.
Am I the only one not seeing 0DTE pits for 651,652, 653, 654 on IBKR?
That’s unfortunate. IBKR only charged me A$13.46 for buying 2 million shares, and that’s because I spread it over 2 buys
Unless you have IBKR, don’t do this as you just watching on the sideline
I find IBKR’s fees to be extremely reasonable. Their commissions are relatively low and their FX rates are amongst the best in the business, so much so that some people have abused it to make currency conversions without actually trading (which is technically not allowed by IBKR).
Cheers, I've been reading up on IBKR, seems like a good platform for stocks, less for margin trading. Can you tell me your experience around Extra costs: Market data subscriptions FX conversion fees Routing fees
Buy before 2:30pm for a same day settlement. Until t+0 can be done efficiently and without any major hiccups, the industry should keep regular way. ADRs are already a thing (and if there isn’t any for the company you want there needs to be enough demand for a bank to set up an unsponsored ADR). Or use IBKR or other brokerages that let you buy foreign stock directly from foreign exchanges. 24/7 trading is not going to be liquid 24/7, we can already see that with AH and premarket spreads. Clearing Houses and Transfer Agents provide stability to market operations. A clearing house is important for counterparty risk, in times of crisis a clearing houses are what keeps the domino effect of one firm going under from happening to the next. Transfer agents make sure everything is legally compliant, your dividends are paid on time, there isn’t any fraud going on, and most important allows stocks bought to be recorded in street name, this makes transfer of those shares easy and quick. In order to get rid of all these things, it’s not going to happen overnight and there will be hiccups along the way and ultimately lead to the same conclusion 100s of years of market participation has come up with.
Is IBKR spreads and fills better than other brokerages? What’s your average cost on fees for 50 SPX contracts?
IBKR just sent me an email that micro futures on Bitcoin and ETH are available. Puts on your account.
I'm just some guy on the internet here, but why would you not be in IBKR? All the actual banks just bend you over and absolutely Reem out your asshole. And like I said I'm a guy on the internet, and this is 2026 so I respect your life choices, but damn dude. I'm assuming you are Canadian but you can be Canadian and trade options on IBKR, and it's not some fly by night bullshit, Google it, interactive brokers is a decent, respected brokersge. As much as any scum sucking fuckface brokerage can be at least :)
LMAO you really are retarded, have you not use IBKR before you genuinely don't know it shows the lowest value first and everything above that gets scrunch up if the difference is too wide? Cope harder >as I was saying it’s a non event unlikely to effect markets long term You genuinely are impossibly retarded lmao
I think this might honestly be the worst decision I've ever seen on this sub ever Switch to IBKR
It’s Google puts lmao which I was down heavy on now to break even and a drop of ASTS. Does liquidity matter early cuz u can’t see prices on IBKR can I just smack market order
I see for US, IBKR option fee per contract at buy/sell is 0.15$-0.65$ depending on monthly volume (maxed at 100,000 contracts trade), and for canada, 1.25cad to 1cad. if you have 1000+ pages of option buy/sell. that would be over 10,000$ just in option fees. also if you just gamble spy 0dte, spy can't have that much worse fill than IBKR. maybe a cent diff
You can do it with IBKR but you can't set a trailing stop outside market hours so it's even more time with head innfront of a screen babysitting your positions.
I just started studying options, will try to implement this strategy. Limited risk is always welcome. Yesterday I got a message from IBKR warning me of excess liquidity, then I went to see that I had 200K in puts with various expiring dates…I must change strategy.
that would be like 100k trades on IBKR lol
You should switch to IBKR or WealthSimple. That will easily cut your fees by 90%. They’ll even give you free stock or money to switch if you use a referral code
I do trade on IBKR already, I just prefer Wealthsimple. Sure, it might not be as robust or fleshed out of an experience, but I do think soon it might be comparable.
Yeah I mostly sell naked puts which they still don't have, but I've been keeping an eye on them, waiting. IBKR doesn't support where I live, I tried questrade, they put me in a margin call when I transfer in kind lol, so I have a feeling even if WS allows naked puts, I still won't be able to move. One trick I learned is to ask them to tell you your margin based on your current holdings before you transfer so you can get a feel for another brokerages risk appetite basically.
itrade is hot garbage, holy fuck. Get IBKR
Anyone recommending WS doesn't know what they're talking about, extremely limited and heavily restricted. IBKR is the only way to go unless you want to pay for a fancier UI
It’s wild how many WS comments there are here, definitely do not move to WS for options. But definitely move away from iTRADE, platform sucks ass. IBKR is the way to go.
Yeah the problem is they just don't support all option types so that's why most people are trade options probably aren't with them, yeah IBKR would be my recommendation likely! If WS finally gets all the options setup, they'd be a real contender they keep putting things out and pushing the limits so that is impressive!
I mean, I’ve had a great experience with Wealthsimple, but I guess if he doesn’t want to use Wealthsimple. IBKR Canada is literally the next best thing and much cheaper than Scotia.
Bro trading here on his banking app like it's the stone age lmfao. IBKR forever. Fuck these banks.
but IBKR has option trading fee right? at his trade volume, wealthsimple would be better
God damn. I used itrade for my TFSA and when I saw their commissions I instantly noped out. Switch to IBKR, the fills are better and commissions are tiered Also what is your total loss for the year?
Thank you for that! I use IBKR so I’ll have a play around in there and see if they display the straddle value in the option chain. Also, when you say add the call and put values to get the straddle value, there is a bid and ask for each of those - should I take the mid on each of the put and call side and add those to get the straddle value?
IBKR currently has 4.2M shares available for shorting. I don’t think the shorts are in any danger right now.
Hi, I have been trying to see what options brokers work in my region or not. So I registered for Tastytrade and they fully accepted my account. When I was just taking a look around their portal, I came across this [https://imgur.com/NNBRNQq](https://imgur.com/NNBRNQq) My question is, is this the smallest order size possible? [https://imgur.com/vS5RXwk](https://imgur.com/vS5RXwk) In simple words, can I not do this order if my account had say just 1000$ ? In IBKR, their demo trader shows the smallest size just taking about 560USD
UK retail investors can't buy/trade SPY. That access is limited to large UK institutions. The closest you can do is SPX which is cash and thus no dividends. But you can trade Options on SPX. I trade SPX on IBKR.
Switched to IBKR from RH today. Fuck you RH
IBKR hits you with a cute warning if your excess liquidity is less than 10% of your account value. Does robinhood? For reference, usually, when I’ve seen this warning at IB, few good things have happened
The RH to IBKR switch alone will probably make a noticeable difference in your fills. PFOF brokers have a structural conflict where your order is the product being sold to the market maker, and the "price improvement" they advertise is measured against the NBBO which is already wide enough to be profitable for the internalizer. DMA at least puts your order into the actual book where it can interact with real liquidity. Whether you get filled better than your limit depends on the order type and routing, but at minimum you're not paying an invisible toll to Citadel on every fill. That said I'd push back slightly on the idea that slippage is purely a broker issue. Even on IBKR with smart routing, the fundamental problem remains that the mid on a multi-leg structure is a fiction. Better routing gets you closer to the real executable price, but the gap between theoretical mid and executable price exists regardless of broker. Switching from RH to IBKR probably closes 30-40% of the slippage gap. The rest is market microstructure that no broker can fix because it's just the cost of transacting in options that don't have infinite liquidity. On strategy, it's predominantly short vol on SPX. Iron condors, strangles, and some naked puts depending on the vol regime. But I'm not dogmatic about it. There are specific situations where I'll go long, usually buying cheap downside convexity when the VIX term structure is in steep contango and the cost of tail protection is historically cheap relative to realized moves. Think of it less as going long vol directionally and more as buying insurance at a discount when the market is underpricing the tails. The short premium book pays for it and the occasional tail hedge payoff more than covers the cost of the ones that expire worthless. The sizing is very different though. Short vol is the core income engine with defined risk. Long vol is a small allocation that exists to make sure I survive the day the income engine breaks.
I'm not tracking this metric specifically, but I know some brokers are notoriously bad at their display metrics. Was using RH for a while and their math was a\*\*. I am switching over to IBKR or potentially tasty, but slippage is real. Crazy that it has effected you this much. The mid display is super deceiving bc its a hypothetical that market makers display, not sure if this is necessarily and broker issue-but I know with RH their order fill is notoriously garbage and they use PFOF vs IBKR using DMA so you might actually get BETTER fills than the limit price you set. Are you primarily running a short vol arbitrage strategy on SPX or do you ever go long?
Wow. Have an award, Sir. 1) Yep, im on Tiered. 2) Im classified as a Professional. I know cos im paying much higher data fees than a retail would. 3) I always use Limit orders. All my trades are multi-legs, the simplest being 2 legs with a calender, but most are 4 legs (dbl cals, ICs and Iron Flies). I can usually get reasonable fills about 0.10-0.30 points from the mid. My typical contract is larger than 10 points ($1,000) so the spread might be 9.50 - 10.60 and ill put an order to buy for 10.05 and then just raise it by 0.05 increments. Im not in a rush to fill, cos im not 0DTEing. My tenors are from a few days to 4 weeks. 4) >Also look at your Monday/Friday clustering. If you're opening and closing a large number of contracts on those two days, you're competing with every other premium seller who follows the same weekly cycle. This is exactly whats happening. As a rule, i rarely open a trade before 11:00 am EST just cos of the spreads and market restlessness. 5) > If you're submitting a lot of small orders (1-2 contracts each) rather than batching, you could be paying effectively $0.50-1.00 per contract on those small orders instead of $0.50. Spot on. For new trades, i always open with 1 contract first as a sanity check. (I fat-fingered a 50 contract order years ago and put the wrong price and lost a lot of money.) Today i opened 1 contract of a IF, and i see my comms were $6.56 (each leg was $1.64 - i assume its made up of ibkr comms plus exchange fees etc). Then i bought another 99 contracts and these were filled in batches.....10 lots cost $51.62, so effectively $5.16/contract. Another 26 filled at same comms etc. 6) >IBKR's adaptive algo is worth testing if you're not already using it I will look into this. 7) I checked my routing and ive been using the default setting of "Smart multipurpose". Im gonna try out the "Smart Prefer Rebate" setting to see if that helps. Finally, i cannot thank you enough - the information on this thread is gold.
Sorry for hijacking the thread with my question, but if I'm converting from INR, should I convert to USD and buy on US exchange or buy EUR and invest in Irish-domiciled US funds? 'Cuz I've heard that the US estate tax kicks in at 60,000 USD and I'm likely to exceed that threshold. The platform I invest through is IBKR.
Good clarification, that changes things. If you're locked into IBKR through the LTD structure and almost exclusively trading SPX, here's where to focus. First, confirm you're on tiered pricing. At just under 10K contracts a month you're right on the edge of the $0.50 tier. Even if you're slightly under, the difference between $0.65 and $0.50 across 9,500 contracts is roughly $17K a year. You can switch between fixed and tiered in Account Settings, it takes effect next session, no phone call needed. On SPX specifically, your options are routing to CBOE since that's where SPX exclusively trades. So you don't have the same exchange shopping that equity options give you. But within CBOE there are still different order types that affect your costs. On tiered pricing, IBKR passes through the exchange fees and rebates separately. For SPX, CBOE charges different rates depending on whether you're a customer, professional, or firm account. Your LTD company structure might classify you as a "professional customer" or "firm" rather than retail customer, and that distinction matters because CBOE's fee schedule is different for each. Check your statements carefully. If IBKR has you classified as professional or firm, your exchange fees per contract are higher than what a retail customer pays. It might be worth asking IBKR directly how your LTD is classified and whether there's any flexibility. The bigger opportunity for you is probably order type optimization rather than routing. A few things to look at. Use limit orders rather than marketable limits. On SPX multi-leg orders, the difference between hitting the ask and sitting a few cents inside the spread can be 5-10 cents per contract. Across 10K contracts a month that dwarfs your commission savings. IBKR's adaptive algo is worth testing if you're not already using it. It starts passive and gets more aggressive over time. For SPX spreads where you're not in a rush, it tends to get better fills than a straight limit at mid. Also look at your Monday/Friday clustering. If you're opening and closing a large number of contracts on those two days, you're competing with every other premium seller who follows the same weekly cycle. Spreads on SPX options tend to be slightly wider on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons for exactly this reason. If any of your Friday closes or Monday opens can shift to Thursday afternoon or Tuesday morning respectively, you might see a small but consistent improvement in fill quality. One more thing worth checking on your statements. IBKR charges a minimum commission per order of $1.00 on tiered. If you're submitting a lot of small orders (1-2 contracts each) rather than batching, you could be paying effectively $0.50-1.00 per contract on those small orders instead of $0.50. Batching your entries into fewer larger orders where possible helps here. Realistically at your volume and being locked into IBKR through the LTD, you're probably looking at saving $8-15K a year between moving to tiered (if you haven't), optimizing order types, and tightening up execution timing. Not life changing but that's real money compounding over a few years.
Thanks for the comprehensive response. I should have clarified - i do a lot of contracts on Mondays and Fridays (when im opening/closing positions) but its much lower on Tue/Wed/Thur. I estimate im just under the 10,000 contracts a month mark. > You might be leaving money on the table with your order types rather than your commission tier. Yeah i need to check this. I trade almost exclusively options on the SPX, so not sure if rebates are applicable. Another complication for me is that i am a UK resident who trades via a LTD company (the American equiv of an LLC) and thus im very much limited to IBKR. But i also have a much smaller personal options account which i can move to a different broker but TBH, my comms there are less than $5k a year. Would appreciate any further advice on routing/order types/rebates etc.
$85K in commissions on 600+ contracts a day means you're probably doing somewhere around 12-15K contracts a month. That puts you squarely in the $0.50 tier, not the $0.65 tier. If you're still paying $0.65 you might not have switched to tiered pricing, which you can do in account settings without calling anyone. But the bigger question is whether IBKR is even the right broker at your volume. At 12-15K contracts a month you're past retail but below the threshold where IBKR will negotiate. That's the awkward middle ground. A few things worth looking at. Tastytrade caps at $1 per contract with no per-leg fees and their cap on multi-leg is lower. Depending on your strategy mix that could cut your costs meaningfully. If you're doing a lot of spreads, the per-leg savings add up fast. Some of the smaller prop-friendly brokers will negotiate at your volume. Tradier charges $0.35 flat per contract with no base fee on their subscription plan. At 150K contracts a year that's $52.5K vs your $85K, which is a $32K annual saving for basically the same execution. The other angle nobody talks about is exchange rebates on tiered. On IBKR tiered, if you're adding liquidity with limit orders rather than taking with market orders, the exchange rebates can offset a meaningful chunk of the commission. Depending on which exchanges your orders route to, you could be getting $0.20-0.40 back per contract. If you're not already checking your execution reports for rebate credits, start there. You might be leaving money on the table with your order types rather than your commission tier. At $85K a year in commissions, even a 20% reduction is $17K back in your pocket. That's worth a weekend of paperwork to move brokers or optimize routing.
>Tiered gets you down to around $0.15-0.25 per contract on higher volume tiers vs $0.65 fixed. Just checked IBKRs pricing for options trading and (i dont know how to post an image) its basically : <10,000 contracts a months....... 0.65/contract 10,000 to 50,000 contracts/month...... 0.50/contract 50,000 to 100,000 contracts.....0.25/contract >100,000 contracts...... 0.15/contract. Very, very rarely will a retail trader do > 100,000 contracts a month. So, we guys are largely stuck at 0.65/contract even on tiered. I myself paid like $85,000 in comms last year. I'd love to reduce this. Ive traded over 600 contracts just today. A couple of years ago, i contacted IBKR and asked if they could offer me a discount, and they basically laughed me out of the room. I think they mentioned that id have to be paying $250k comms a month before theyd entertain the idea. PS - incredible thread btw, and with many very enlightening and knowledgeable comments.
You can on IBKR. Can even sell VIX index calls or VIX futures calls. Right now I'm short some VIX futures and I've got a short put on XSP, definitely not cash secured. Actually doesn't matter with a margin account, you just go into negative cash and pay interest until you're long again. Sometimes I wonder what kinda shit brokers you guys are using.
Oh, makes sense! My broker (IBKR) allowed me to redeem shares today.
IBKR is so fucking laggy opening up the app. Takes like 30 seconds to update quotes even with a good connection. The latency is fucking horrible and I’m in US-East. Anyone else experience this?
If the transfer details were off, I’d pause and verify the exact payment method/reference with IBKR support before sending anything else. No position.
Jesus. I am in love. What's the best platform? IBKR, ToS?