US stock market
IB is great for frequent trading, especially options, where their brokerage rates beat the pants off basically every local Aust broker there is. i am one of those people who is happy with IB’s services, have been trading thru them for 13 odd years now.
but i don’t think they are suitable for long term buy & hold, even after they waived the minimum activity fees recently. their commissions are still better of course, but for long term buy & hold i don’t really care about a few $ in commission, as i’m buying once and holding for years and years. i prefer the security of having long term assets held in a central depository instead of a custodian account, even though the risk of broker failure is negligible, it’s just not worth it to me taking that risk to save a tiny bit of brokerage that’s paid ONCE for a long term buy & hold and then forgotten about.
i use IB for short term options trading only, and keep my buy & hold international portfolio in NABtrade. i only hold ASX listed international ETFs though, not individual overseas stocks, and for those the brokerage is exactly the same as it is for ASX stock trades – $19.95 for $20K is the sweet spot (it’s actually a higher % for trades above $20K), which also happens to be a convenient DCA size for me.
