Investments

Interactive Brokers review: an outstanding trading platform

Interactive Brokers provides you with an incredible trading platform and access to a wide range of investment options.

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by Danilo Pereira

Published on 09/23/2022

Understanding Interactive Brokers: get access to a large selection of securities to trade at low margin rates

interactive brokers
Interactive Brokers offers a wide variety of investment tools. Source: The Post New.

Interactive Brokers is one of the most popular brokers for advanced traders, but since 2019 it has also become popular with more casual investors. Let’s review the Interactive Brokers platform and what it has to offer.

  • Trading fees: A fixed minimum fee of $1 and a maximum of 1% of the total trade value on stocks. Tiered minimum of $0.35 or 1% of trade value on stocks.
  • Account minimum: N/A
  • Promotion: N/A
  • Investment choices: Stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, bonds, options, futures, forex, international markets, penny stocks, cryptocurrency, fractional shares.
interactive brokers

How to join Interactive Brokers?

Open an account with Interactive Brokers today and get access to a large selection of securities and low per-share pricing.

Their second-tier service became known as IBKR LIte, and with it, you get unlimited free trades with stocks and ETFs, which are listed on U.S. exchanges.

Both the IBKR Lite and the IBKR Pro allow you to trade options, futures, mutual funds, fixed income, and more.

Interactive Brokers: understand how it works

You can open an account at Interactive Brokers with no minimum deposit requirements. Casual investors will find the free trades the IBKR Lite offer especially attractive.

That is not to say advanced traders who choose IBKR Pro will be disappointed. This more advanced platform offers low stock and ETF commissions. 

Frequent traders who trade at high volumes pay just $0.005 per share. To pay this much, however, you must meet a $1 minimum trade requirement, or 1% of the total trade value. Not to mention exchange and regulatory fees.

Interactive Brokers have a relatively rare feature among brokers. They charge no annual, account, transfer, or closing fees. The fewer fees, the better!

The broker offers a wide range of tradable securities. Stocks, options, ETFs, precious metals, forex, warrants, futures, and even crypto.

Interactive Brokers gives you 24/7 access to the major cryptocurrencies bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, and bitcoin cash. 

Interactive Brokers also offers one of the best trading platforms available for advanced traders. The Desktop Trader Workstation is a powerful tool that appeals to both advanced and casual traders alike.

This robust platform provides traders with a customizable account dashboard, real-time monitoring, watchlist, and alerts.

It allows you to create, compare, and submit options strategies of all levels of complexity.

In the broker’s service package, you also have the IBKR mobile app available to both Lite and Pro customers.

The app provides traders with over 400 data columns, advanced trading shortcuts, news, research, charting, and even option exercise and spread templates.

On top of all that, Interactive Brokers provides 24-hour support via phone, email, or online chat, six days a week.

This is one of the perks of a company that offers its services to investors in 218 countries and territories.

Review of Interactive Brokers’ significant benefits and disadvantages

young investor using online broker
Having a good online broker is essential for your investment career. Source: Freepik.

Now that you have become familiar with Interactive Brokers’ ins and outs, let’s put their pros and cons side by side for comparison so you can review them.

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Benefits

  • Wide range of investment instruments
  • High-quality research and tools
  • Superior order execution
  • Low margin rates and commission

Disadvantages

  • Intimidating to less experienced investors
  • Research tools may incur a fee
  • Complex pricing plans
  • Poor website and client portal design

Is a good credit score required from applicants?

Interactive Brokers does not run credit checks on its applicants. Therefore it is not necessary to have a good credit score to open an account.

Learn how to apply and open an Interactive Brokers account

So, are you ready to take the next step and start managing your investments? If so, we have prepared a step by step guide for you to open your Interactive Brokers account today.

Just click the link below, and we will take you there.

interactive brokers

How to join Interactive Brokers?

Open an account with Interactive Brokers today and get access to a large selection of securities and low per-share pricing.

About the author  /  Danilo Pereira

Danilo is a copywriter with a passion for learning. Deeply interested in philosophy, politics and arts.

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