Haha, good attitude! Hope you succeed!
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No harsh feelings, just in for a good talk. 
The common knowledge or reception about no one beating the market is not entirely true. To just name a few Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch and T. Rowe Price. I’ve never said it’s easy. Beating the market while operating a huge fund is a tough job. Warren Buffet once said that if you give him a million, he can generate 50% of return all day. So, the reason has to do with the size of the fund because once your trade size becomes too large, you basically move with market thus affect the outcome. So, this is that part of the problem.
If you don’t run a multi-billion dollar fund, it’s actually quite possible to beat the market. Not a lot of people are willing to spend the time doing the research or people simply don’t have the knowledge to do so. Buffet also once said, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you diversify. People on this forum tend to invest in ETFs because this is for them the easiest and risk-adjusted and well-diversified option.
If you believe in one company and hold just one or two stocks over the period of 10 years. You will beat the market by a large margin. ETF and mutual funds cannot do that, because the risk is simply too great for the collective investment vehicle.
When I say actively trading, I really mean actively managed my own investment. I do not day trade or speculate. If you held just two or three stocks back in 2015, let’s say, NFLX, TSLA and AAPL, or even bitcoin, you would beat the hell out of the benchmark. I know a lot of people achieved financial freedom by doing just that. To get that 10 or 20x. It’s not impossible or some myths. You just have to really do your research and have a vision and understand the company you invest in. There is however always risk associated with it.
I’m not bashing passive investment, because I also invest some of my savings in passive ETFs. But it will take you much longer to achieve your goal and it is also not guaranteed as many of you think, because even a SP500 ETF can also yield just 2% after 10 years. The timing and the economic environment are the key! Let’s take an example of dot-com bubble back in 2000-2001. If you invested at the peak of the market, it’d take you 10 years to just recoup your initial investment! So nothing is guaranteed, even with your passive strategy.
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sorry, guys, I still have to bash IBRK a bit. 
When I log in to the web-based version of IBKR. It often hangs and the page fails to load data. It’s always loading and I have to click “fresh” to get it going again. Is it on your end like that too?
…with a broadly diversified portfolio, that is.
I agree with (and have previously stated similarly) with violetblau:
Beating a broadly diversified index may not be easy - but easily possible, once you give up the goal of diversifying in a similar manner.
You are unlikely to find one broker that is the best at everything.
IBKR is not the best user interface but I have my assets there because the margin loan rate is ~1% vs. TDA is ~9% and because of the wider choice of international products
I have a residual account balance at TDA of $100 which gives me free access to ThinkorSwim including live data. I have used that for my research then placed order in IBKR.
I stopped doing this since I did not want to put my unrealised capital gains at risk of being taxed (see discussions about professional trader and tax)
unrealized capital gains are not taxed. I don’t know who told you that.
@Barto probably mean’t that he doesn’t want to risk becoming classified as a professional trader and tactics used to lower the cost basis can be seen as professional trading by the tax authorities.
Not unrealized gains
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Please can you support this by quoting official tax rules of Switzerland?
I have a hard time to believe that unrealized gains are also being taxed.
Yes, you are right, I fixed my post. He probably meant that he doesn’t want to risk that his unrealised gains get taxed once he realises them being classified as professional trader.
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I’m sorry, I fixed my post, please see my reply below.
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Yes this is what I meant. Apologies I was not clear.
I don’t want to be at risk of being taxed when I sell and realise gains. The extra income I would earn writing put options to open positions is small in comparison and not worth the risk
(If I had already realised the gains it would not be a problem because I have not been classified as a professional trader so far )
As for additional income the marginal tax rate is relevant, 10% would be very low. E.g. in ZH you have a marginal tax rate of about 30% at a taxable income of 120k. And with AHV that would be 40%.
Just the marginal federal tax rate is already 8.8% at 120k.
Yes, that’s roughly the number for an unmarried person in Zurich city. Remember, this is the marginal tax rate, not the average one. 10% cantonal tax, 12% communal tax, 8.8% federal tax.
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There was a guy on this forum retiring with 11 million gains on Bitcoin. Did you?
So you have a 100k portfolio. What do you do with your trading gains? What about going back to basics and learn about compounding interest?
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Actually… No.
If you say that something is working, and others don’t believe you, show it. For now I don’t see your money there where your mouth is.
Keep it cool guys.
This thread is one day old, 50 messages and two third of it is drama without any link to the original topic.
That’s a good moment to remind everybody of the new Moderation Policy.
This kind of cheap shot is not needed here.
You’re not going to make a lot of friends as a newcomer with this kind of approach either.
Back to the topic:
I work also in the finance industry and I’ve seen with my own eyes half a dozen businesses powered by IBKR. They use it to handle all their trading needs. Hell, even hedge funds use IBKR.
If institutionals use IBKR, I doubt a retail investor won’t be able to fit their needs.
Users with simple needs (buying ETFs or shares) can use the portal of the mobile app. For more demanding needs, nothing beats TWS. Yes, the user interface is ugly. But if you are working in finance you should know that people absolutely don’t care about that (the most used tool in the industry - by a mile - is Bloomberg Terminal, which is at least as ugly as TWS). Institutionals don’t want fancy UIs, they want tools that work reliably at the lowest cost possible.
Anyway, i am sure you will find how to implement your option trading strategy in TWS. If you’re not sure how to, I’d advise you to play with the sandbox demo account.
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Well done on the great trading results.
The professional trader risk and consequences depend on personal circumstances.
If you have the same 120k salary and a larger portfolio that may make (say) 300k gains on long stock positions in good years, whilst perhaps also having a margin loan => the risk of being classified as a professional trader is higher. The downside would be having to pay tax + AVS on the 300k as well as any profits from options trading.
A word of caution here: gaining 40% return on option trading doesn’t necessarily mean you are a good/great trader. It can also mean that you are taking risks which are too high. Since we don’t know which options were traded and how the risk management looked like, it’s just a number.
From what I know, 20% return on option trading per year is considered pretty good. Of course you can have better years as well, but the most important part is to have proper risk management and not lose your equity when things don’t go as planned.
Just as a warning for others who might be tempted to get into option trading.
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Hi Mod @Julianek , thank you for intervening. Appreciate it. Interesting take here. Can you tell us what kind of financial institutions use IBKR, is that an asset management firm or trading desk or prop trading?
I don’t agree with you on the Bloomberg Terminal UI. I use Bloomberg a lot. That platform is super duber refined and polished. The workflow and user experience are topnotch. You can’t compare IBKR with BB. You can’t judge the aesthetics of the UI design. That’s to personal preference. But look at the layout and the quality of each button/icon and responsiveness there, they are just so well made. An almost 30k annual fee for the terminal says it all.
IBKR UI is a broken design. It’s bloated and cumbersome to use. The width of each field drives me nuts. And it’s sluggish and doesn’t utilize graphics card acceleration. If I click on something, it needs to be quick! I can’t wait for the software to refresh its interface to show me the numbers. Every sec counts. It feels flat overall.
In my humble career, I have not yet seen a firm using IBKR as their main trading platform. BB is always the way to go or institution’s own software. IBKR has an API and expansion tools for algo trading. I would imagine that some props or algo trading companies would use it for their automated trading. Companies use that primarily to save cost.
I played a bit with the option strategy box of IBKR, it’s horrible. After using TD, it is just day and night.