Interactive Brokers for dummies

Investing / Brokers
512

Thanks all for your posts and help. It’s done. In case it helps someone in the future I write how long each step took:

Open a PostFinance USD account - 1 day
Sell the PostFinance USD fund directly into that USD account - sell order made on Friday, money arrived in USD account Monday
Transfer the USD to IB - transfer order from PostFinance to IB made on Monday, earliest execution date selectable was Tuesday.
Buy the USD ETF - money arrived in IB on Wednesday and ETF bought on Wednesday.

Transfer from PostFinance to IB cost around $18, I don’t know if that includes PostFinance’s CHF 2 fee or not.

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513

Since Degiro will increase its currency exchange fees and after Interactive Brokers removed the minimum deposit fee, I finally changed partly to IBKR. I have two questions:

Yesterday I made my first purchase of US stocks (about 20 stocks, each around 50 US). I got a fee for that of 1 USD. I realized that I have the “Festpreis” price structure and not the “Gestaffelt” in my account.

  1. Is my assumption correct that I can switch between these price structure whenever I want (in the settings menu)? There is no “minimum days” or something similar I have to wait until I can change again?

  2. I mainly trade in ETFs and a few shares (with values mostly above 10 USD/CHF) and never above 1000-3000 USD/CHF at once. In this case the “Gestaffelt” option is definitely the better choice, or have I missed something?

Update: I mainly trade with stocks (US and Switzerland) and ETF (US, Switzerland, Xetra), and as said, normally between 1000-3000 USD/CHF/EUR

514

Changes to account settings are applied overnight typically.

I am not aware of a situation, where fixed fee is better.

515

In theory, the Gestaffelt price can be more expensive on a specific transaction if you are unlucky. If your order on an expensive exchange (Zürich but not NY) is split in an unlikely high number of small transactions, that can be more expensive. I wouldn’t worry about that.

516

Thanks for these helpful comments, much appreciated! I will definitely switch to “gestaffelt” then.

517

Hi all,
I opened an account with IBKR and I want to make a bank transfer to IBKR to buy us shares.
What is the best solution ? If I want to transfer CHF, it tells me that there are negative interest rates.
Thanks for your advices

518

best way is to go to IB portal and do the “make transfer/ deposit”, where you get precise information on how to wire your funds.
dont bother for negative interest as you are about to buy stuff for your swiss francs. dont “store” your cash with IB

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519

Negative rates are from 50k CHF. It is not a place to store your cash, otherwise it doesn’t matter.

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520

Actually a good point. Do you guys have a minimum buy amount?

if you get a couple of hundred bucks in dividend, would you buy 1, or 2 or 7 shares VT? Or wait for enough funds until you can buy 100 at one go?

And, what is the minimum you’d leave in your account?

521

I periodically compare my holdings with my target allocation and buy if I hold less than my target. I normally only buy if the deviation is at least 0.5% of my taxable net worth. (Or sell if I’m over the target by 2% or more). However, after a dividend payout I tend to buy even if it’s less than 0.5% as I don’t like keeping uninvested foreign currency around - and it’s cheap to buy VT at IB.

I keep close to zero USD in cash as I don’t want to be exposed to currency risk without investment. I currently have about 1% of my net worth in CHF cash at IB because I anyway have more cash than I need on my bank accounts (due to CHF bonds being terrible).

Having cash at IB has the benefit that I can immediately invest when rebalancing without the need of a margin loan. I don’t see this as critically important, though. I could normally also wait for the transfer or use a short-lived margin loan.

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522

If I already have USD at IB, I invest if it is over 100 USD. Trading fees are very low, so it is fine. I also tried recently to buy fractional shares of ETFs. It is even easier, you just input how much you want to invest and press “buy”. But it is not extremely precise, so I got into a miniscule negative balance. Next time I will leave a buffer of 1-2 USD.

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523

I have a new account with Interactivebrokers and want to make a test payout (transfer) to my Swiss bank account in CHF. I have about CHF 100 in cash on Interactivebrokers (besides some shares) and I also saved my Swiss bank account information for the payout. However, on the transfer funds site it shows for the available funds (‘Zur Auszahlung verfügbare Barmittel’) CHF 0.00. So, a test transfer of say CHF 50 is not possible. Why that? Is there an explanation for that?

524

When did you deposit the money? Maybe the cash isn’t settled yet. Do you see the CHF 100 in the portfolio overview as ‘Settled Cash’?

525

Deposited it like 1 month ago and with that I also bought shares. I can see that I have in CHF 107.xx. So, the money is clearly there and available.

PS: Also realize that interactivebrokers is very slow today, sometimes even not working. Maybe they have internal problems…?

526

Also very strange, if logging in (I tried already a few times today) the menu to make the payout doesn’t appear anymore. There was an additional menu-position available earlier this morning somewhere around ‘PortfolioAnalyst’ and ‘Berichte’… I haven’t made an changes anywhere…!

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I guess they’re having internal problems. It is also not possible to write an internal message:

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527

I just tested this and was able to create a withtdrawal of 25 CHF without any problems.

Edit: Just received it on my account, didn’t it was that fast… :open_mouth:

528

Thanks for checking. I even don’t have the option anymore to do this :wink: And if clicking on Support (while being logged in) nothing happens… very strange… and I also checked different Browsers…

529

Hi all! Lurker coming in with dummy question. For those of us based in Switzerland, is there a reason not to use InteractiveBrokers when compared to local brokers? It seems:

  1. Commissions are lower in IBKR even when compared to the lower cost brokers, like PostFinance
  2. There are no custody fees
  3. The stamp duty only applies to Swiss brokers and IBKR is not one

Point #3 actually leaves me a bit worried - I have read about it online several times but does anyone know the actual legal justification as to why no Stamp duty tax is due on purchases/sales in foreign brokers?

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530

If you only look at costs, there probably isn‘t.

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531

They have the widest choice of products and cheap margin loans too

Downside is offshore customer service centre and not having someone in Switzerland to strangle in case something goes wrong

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