Interactive Brokers

Hi silvernomics,

let me ask you about IB:

in addition to options, precious metals (OTC), and forex, do you have any option available regarding CDS? 

Thanks in advance.

I have an IB account, and yes you can trade the canadian exchanges with pretty cheap fees.  I think you can dig up the fee

structure somewhere.  I had initially had just a scottrade account, but after paying over a $30 commission to buy 20000 shares of olympus pacific at .05 (one of my better trades),  I found out that the price of the stock was also increased a penny for the market maker, and a penny would be shaved of when selling.  So my commission was effectively $230 on a $1000 buy.

With IB, the commissions start at $1 but go up with # of shares.  The stated commission might actually be higher than $30 for 20K shares but I don't think they add a full penny to the price of the stock.

As far as CDS's I couldn't find any mention of them. 

With IBs, be prepared to have minimal help.  you pretty much have to send an email and hope the keywords in your email pull up the right answer, because I don't think the customer service is allowed to spend more than a minute or so on each question.

They also charge 10 a month in inactivity fees, which if you have a single account kicks in if you don't do trades which generate $10 in commissions.  For a master/client setup, it's $20 in commissions needed.  Those details were pretty well hidden.