Brokerage/platforms terrible in Oz

[Steve-IB]

I know this has turned into an IB thread, but I am looking for a new broker for ETO's. Does anyone have any views on Options Express for ETO's?

dubious - I'll leave the OX question for others to answer.
However, IB will have Australian ETO's very soon - hopefully by Monday. Commission $1.88 per contract plus ACH fees ($1.12) - no minimum.

 

[dubiousinfo]

dubious - I'll leave the OX question for others to answer.
However, IB will have Australian ETO's very soon - hopefully by Monday. Commission $1.88 per contract plus ACH fees ($1.12) - no minimum.

That's great to hear, thanks for the information Steve.

 

[Steve-IB]

End of July? Monday or Tuesday?
:band

Shorting stock is now available.
http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/shortableStocks.php?ib_entity=llc

 

[juw177]

^^ This is great news. Hope IB continues to increase the focus on the Australian market.

 

[Steve-IB]

^^ Hope IB continues to increase the focus on the Australian market.

As long as business grows .... so please tell all your friends!!!

 

[sails]

...However, IB will have Australian ETO's very soon - hopefully by Monday. Commission $1.88 per contract plus ACH fees ($1.12) - no minimum.

Sounds good, Steve! Any idea of exercise/assignment fees at this stage? Also, will it be possible to enter combos on line - including multi legs?

The reason I ask is that one of the brokers I currently use allows only a two legged spread to be ordered online and although they have the order boxes for butterflies, condors, etc, they can't be used for the Oz market. So I have wondered if this is due to ASX restrictions.

Will there be any facility for option quote requests to be made online?

Will your platform supplying Oz data include options for the same price?

 

[yonnie]

great to be able to short with IB.

however I think that IB dont pay interest on the short positions on the first $ 130,000.
so if you have $ 200,000 in short positions, you get paid over $ 70,000.
is that correct Steve?

with cfd providers they pay interest over the full positions at 4.5%

what is IB`s rate at the moment Steve?

but the brokerage with IB is hard to beat

 

[caleb2003]

I know its a bit of an IB love-in here but my recent experience isnt too good.

I've recently tried to open an account with IB and had no end of trouble and very poor customer service. I sent them an amount of money from my bank but I did not realise the bank wouldn't send the account information I put on the details so the result is IB have my money but can't confirm who its from. So I tell them the exact amount and the sending bank and postcode but their customer service people just aren't bothered to follow it up.

As the CS weren't very helpful I decided to not bother with the account and asked for my money returned. Nearly 10 days since I transferred it my money is sat somewhere in cyberspace god knows where so I've had to get my bank to run a trace on it (which will probably be charged to me).

Hopefully I'll get it back one of these days but just wanted to say that I have found the helpdesk do not exactly go above and beyond when something is a little different, maybe its the size of my account thats the issue or maybe I'm expecting too much.

 

[Steve-IB]

Any idea of exercise/assignment fees at this stage?
IB: $2.20/contract + ACH fees ($0.55/contract)

Also, will it be possible to enter combos on line - including multi legs?
IB: Not from day one, but we will add

The reason I ask is that one of the brokers I currently use allows only a two legged spread to be ordered online and although they have the order boxes for butterflies, condors, etc, they can't be used for the Oz market. So I have wondered if this is due to ASX restrictions.
IB: You will be able to do strategies with up to 4 legs.

Will there be any facility for option quote requests to be made online?
IB: Quote request for outright options (single legs) will be available from day one.

Will your platform supplying Oz data include options for the same price?
IB: Options data is included in the stock data feed.

what is IB`s rate at the moment Steve?
IB: Our interest rates all depend on size of balance. General rule of thumb is that if you are running large balances then the rates are probably one of the best you can get. However, if you are running small balances, say below $30k, then the rates are not so good – with nothing for under $10k. The following link has the rates, short rebate tier 1 for AUD will be set at $120k, so with $200k you get paid on $80k
http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/interest.php?ib_entity=llc

Funds and Banking (caleb’s post)
IB: We provide specific instructions when you send funds to us. It’s extremely important that you ensure that when the funds are sent, they reference your IB account number. If they contain your account number or name on the reference then the funds will match the Deposit Notification (a form you complete to tell us that funds are on the way), and go straight into your account.
If you do not put the reference, then essentially we see on our statement “Deposit $5,000, from Commonwealth Bank”. We thus, have no way to know who these funds are for. While CS can view all deposits coming in they will have no way to identify if these funds are yours or not – so will only be able to give general answers. Our bank then returns the funds to the sending bank – but remember all we know is the bank name so in this case we return funds to Commonwealth Bank for no account, but try to reference their previous transfer. This turnaround process can take 5-7 days. We will then advise you to contact your bank to claim the funds.
Unfortunately not everyone is honest, imagine you get 100 deposits of $6,000. 98 of these are flagged with the account number and go direct into the account. Two of these do not have any details – but we have 4 customers complaining they have sent funds…

 

[sails]

Any idea of exercise/assignment fees at this stage?
IB: $2.20/contract + ACH fees ($0.55/contract)

Also, will it be possible to enter combos on line - including multi legs?
IB: Not from day one, but we will add

The reason I ask is that one of the brokers I currently use allows only a two legged spread to be ordered online and although they have the order boxes for butterflies, condors, etc, they can't be used for the Oz market. So I have wondered if this is due to ASX restrictions.
IB: You will be able to do strategies with up to 4 legs.

Will there be any facility for option quote requests to be made online?
IB: Quote request for outright options (single legs) will be available from day one.

Will your platform supplying Oz data include options for the same price?
IB: Options data is included in the stock data feed.…

Thanks for the info, Steve - it's looking good at this stage.

One other question comes to mind: If one is short an option and then is assigned, how long does IB give the customer to take action? The brokers I am currently with give the next trading day for the customer to either close the stock position outright or close it by ordering the exercise of an existing covering long option.

Hopefully being able to enter at least a 2 legged combo won't be too far away!

 

[Steve-IB]

If one is short an option and then is assigned, how long does IB give the customer to take action? The brokers I am currently with give the next trading day for the customer to either close the stock position outright or close it by ordering the exercise of an existing covering long option.
IB: If you don’t have the cash to support the assigned position then we would look at reducing your portfolio in order to comply with the margin requirements.

The watchlist is too short. I can only have 50 shares on the list. Do you know how can I have 200 shares?
IB: You can detach a quote page, so that you can have multiple quote screens showing at one time. You will be able to show 100 quotes at any one time. To show more than 100, will depend on your commissions. After the first month, we use the equation Previous Month Total US$ Commissions divided by 8 = amount of market data lines you can have streaming real-time data at one time. Although minimum is 100 lines.

The column of Average Volume does not works.
IB: Average volume shows the average volume over the last 90 days, but is currently only available for US stocks.

The News time column is about different company with same codes in American market.
IB: By default the RSS providers are the US versions of Google news and Yahoo news. You can configure your news sources yourself. You may get better results if you use Google Australia, etc, or if there are other Australian sites which pipe news in RSS format you can add these to your sources.

 

[Sir Burr]

Steve (or someone who uses the TWS!),

Using the demo and setting "Good After Time" @ market and set "Deliverable Value" for $10000.

The Demo sets the number of stocks to match the CURRENT price when I enter details.

When this actually trades (at the time I set), will the number of stocks match whatever market price I get with the $10000 I wish to trade?

If there is somewhere that spells this out could you link to it please.

Thanks SB

 

[Steve-IB]

Steve (or someone who uses the TWS!),

Using the demo and setting "Good After Time" @ market and set "Deliverable Value" for $10000.

The Demo sets the number of stocks to match the CURRENT price when I enter details.

When this actually trades (at the time I set), will the number of stocks match whatever market price I get with the $10000 I wish to trade?

If there is somewhere that spells this out could you link to it please.

Thanks SB

No. It will use the price when you set-up the order.

 

[caleb2003]

Any idea of exercise/assignment fees at this stage?

Funds and Banking (caleb’s post)
IB: We provide specific instructions when you send funds to us. It’s extremely important that you ensure that when the funds are sent, they reference your IB account number. If they contain your account number or name on the reference then the funds will match the Deposit Notification (a form you complete to tell us that funds are on the way), and go straight into your account.
If you do not put the reference, then essentially we see on our statement “Deposit $5,000, from Commonwealth Bank”. We thus, have no way to know who these funds are for. While CS can view all deposits coming in they will have no way to identify if these funds are yours or not – so will only be able to give general answers. Our bank then returns the funds to the sending bank – but remember all we know is the bank name so in this case we return funds to Commonwealth Bank for no account, but try to reference their previous transfer. This turnaround process can take 5-7 days. We will then advise you to contact your bank to claim the funds.
Unfortunately not everyone is honest, imagine you get 100 deposits of $6,000. 98 of these are flagged with the account number and go direct into the account. Two of these do not have any details – but we have 4 customers complaining they have sent funds…

I can totally understand that and was unaware that the bank hadn't transferred the info. Still if at least one of your CS reps had bothered to relay all that info in a concise manner such as you have done rather than one line answers and then closing tickets then I wouldn't have too much complaint. As it is its still poor Customer service when things aren't communicated properly so puts me off as a customer because it looks that If I got further problems going forward then they could be dealt with in the same way.

 

[Steve-IB]

I can totally understand that and was unaware that the bank hadn't transferred the info. Still if at least one of your CS reps had bothered to relay all that info in a concise manner such as you have done rather than one line answers and then closing tickets then I wouldn't have too much complaint. As it is its still poor Customer service when things aren't communicated properly so puts me off as a customer because it looks that If I got further problems going forward then they could be dealt with in the same way.

Fair point. It's possible they do not know the details. I'lll communicate the information internally.

 

[bvbfan]

As BSB`s start with a 0 in Australia, I dont think its the Australian bank account.

Could somebody tell me the Citi bank account in Sydney?

thanks

Not all bank accouts in Australia start with a 0 BSB, in fact I think it's most likely only the big four + RBA (01, 03, 06, 08, 09)

Foreign banks have different BSB's as they were only allowed much later

Have a look at this link for BSB codes
The first two numbers on the left are the bank codes

 

[sails]

If one is short an option and then is assigned, how long does IB give the customer to take action? The brokers I am currently with give the next trading day for the customer to either close the stock position outright or close it by ordering the exercise of an existing covering long option.
IB: If you don’t have the cash to support the assigned position then we would look at reducing your portfolio in order to comply with the margin requirements.....

Thanks for the reply, Steve

However, supposing insufficient cash in the account to fund a stock purchase due to assignment, does IB give the customer any window of opportunity to deal with the situation themselves, or does IB move in and reduce the portfolio immediately on their notification of the assignment?

 

[Steve-IB]

Thanks for the reply, Steve

However, supposing insufficient cash in the account to fund a stock purchase due to assignment, does IB give the customer any window of opportunity to deal with the situation themselves, or does IB move in and reduce the portfolio immediately on their notification of the assignment?

Assuming you are only holding Australian products. There will be a 10 minute window before IB will act, i.e. we will attempt to reduce positions at 10.10am.
In the account window you can select those positions which you would like to "Liquidate Last".

 

[bvbfan]

Have a look at this link for BSB codes
The first two numbers on the left are the bank codes

Sorry didn't see someone had already posted the link

 

[sails]

Assuming you are only holding Australian products. There will be a 10 minute window before IB will act, i.e. we will attempt to reduce positions at 10.10am.
In the account window you can select those positions which you would like to "Liquidate Last".

Thanks Steve. I guess 10 mins is better than nothing.

WayneL - if you are reading this - how do you find this policy with IB?