Interactive Brokers has cheap commissions ($0.005 per share, minimum of only $1 per trade), awesome executions, great borrows on many hard-to-short stocks, and a great trading platform (trader’s workstation or TWS). Up until now there were only two things I did not like about IB: they had a bad mobile trading platform and they had horrible customer service. With the release of the iPhone real-time trading application IB has finally corrected one of their last significant flaws. But don’t worry: they still have incredibly horrid customer service. Here is what they have to say about their new iTWS trading platform:
IB’s state-of-the-art iTWS provides electronic access to your IB account from your iPhoneTM. iTWS lets you enter and manage orders, view executions, monitor your account balance – all from your iPhone!
With iTWS, you can:
- View real-time streaming market data.
- Trade stocks, options and futures worldwide.
- Take advantage of our SmartRoutingTM technology, which searches for the best price available at the time of your order and dynamically routes and re-routes all or part of your order to achieve optimal execution.
- Monitor your trades.
- Monitor account information.
- Manage your portfolio.
Disclosure: No positions. I am a generally satisfied customer of IB and I have my main trading account there. IB has no affiliate program so I get nothing for recommending them.
I guess the question is: can one trade effectively using a mobile device. Is it a timely and reliable alternative when you’re not at your regular PC. Maybe, if u need to just jump in and out of a trade…
As a part-timer, I’ve ended up executing some trades on my PocketSurfer while at work. Its a kind of ‘mobile internet browser’ that I can carry in my shirt pocket. It allows me to view real webpages rather than pages customised for viewing on a mobile, however its a stressful experience – always probs with connection and scrolling around viewing a real web page on a screen a few inches wide.
Interested to hear how u get on with this new IB platform, Reaper.
I saw this….unlikely I will ever buy or own an iphone, though, so of limited use to me.
I am currently in contract with Sprint and love my cell phone plan … super cheap. I would gladly buy an iPhone if an EVDO model came out just so I could use this application.
I’ve used TOS’s ThinkMobile platform on my WinMobile smartphone before and it was better than web-based trading. It was more than good enough actually.
I’ve used the iTSW iphone app, but found a problem that could be a deal-breaker. If I have to go back to the home screen to check SMS, make phone call, check a website, etc., I get automatically logged out of iTWS. This makes for very unstable trading, since it takes forever to log in onto the platform.
Anyone found a way around this?
Isn’t that the case with all apps? It is my understanding that the iPhone doesn’t have true multi-tasking and when you switch apps you close the one you were switching from.
It seems they have fixed the issue. According to their site you can now “take a call and reconnect to iTWS for up to 10 minutes without having to log back in.”