Interactive Brokers is Pathetic, but Americans Have No Choice

Interactive Brokers provides an awful level of service. Their service is constantly failing – it goes down all the time these days locking traders out of access to their positions and costing them serious losses. And, users of the web interface find that it sometimes logs them on and sometimes does not. Apps are cumbersome and not designed around the Mac. Phone representatives are helpful, but can only be reached by those who have balances large enough to be given a direct number. Others will find themselves waiting on hold for hours.

The trading fees, as well, are completely out of line with ETrade or TDAmeritrade. While they do offer a free product to compete with Robinhood (from which they also sell order flow), it is an entirely no frills product that will not work for most.

In fact, just about everything is frustrating compared to ETrade or TDAmeritrade.

However, there are a few undeniable realities:

First, the US market is seriously overvalued relative to European and Asian markets. Americans should think about accessing these markets. Americans should also think about holding currency outside of US dollars and crypto, such as the Euro, the British pound or the Japanese yen.

Second, we are now fully involved in a climate catastrophe. US companies that are addressing this catastrophe and stand to benefit are few and far between (Tesla, GE, Ford?). European companies are the ones building innovative solutions here. The smaller European renewable companies are not listed at all in the US, and the larger ones (such as Orsted or Vestas) can be traded in the US only through unsponsored ADRs. While Interactive Brokers doesn’t have full access to all markets, it does enable access to the largest markets where all of these companies trade.

It is quite extraordinary that Interactive Brokers in the only online brokerage that will enable Americans to easily trade on foreign markets and to hold foreign currencies. It is equally extraordinary that they provide such a terrible level of service. But, I think we are stuck.