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The money you save at IB in commissions and wire fees (how often do you move money?) will be more than made up by being able to do more trades because of the vastly lower margin requirements at DeCarley.
On short options IB is 3-4x or higher than SPAN margin. IB may be higher on futures too. DeCarley is always at SPAN margin levels. Do a search on this thread or the Selling options thread for IB. You will see many examples of how much higher than SPAN IB has it margins at.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,057 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,399
Thanks Received: 10,225
You sure that's to wire IN? Wire OUT fees are common but not wire in. You can often avoid wire out fees by using ACH/ETF. Of course my bank charges me to wire out!
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,057 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,399
Thanks Received: 10,225
My bank actually waives my wire fees, but I have most of my excess cash in their investment side and they do charge for wires. So if it's an urgent wire I pay the fee, if not I transfer to checking and get the free wire.
IB are infamous for having very bad margin rates on options, and are very quick (and often expensive) to force liquidate positions.
I prefer holding 2 or 3 accounts to avoid third party risk. Consequently, I need 1 or 2 additional brokers to Interactive Brokers.
There are several advantages of DeCarley compared to Interacitve Brokers:
The service is outstanding. Even in case you have a self directed account Carley places trades for you in cases you are not in a position to do so. Eg. on Sunday evening (New York Time), when we are sleeping in good old Europe. And on many other occasions. You get assistance within minutes, whereas at Interactive Brokers you have to wait for days. When there is a large overnight gap (eg. after a report), at Interactive Brokers you are not free to place your order between actual bid /ask before the open. They only allow a value in the order of magnitude of the day before. DeCarley uses SPAN, whereas Interactive Brokers do not use SPAM in all cases. For naked short options there margin is significantly higher, and in case they consider your portfolio as too risky, they add a special daily fee. Interactive Brokers uses forced liquidation intraday, whereas at DeCarley you usually get one additional day to close positions on your own in case there is no major problem. At DeCarley you receive research free of charge, eg. the Hightower Report, including a lot of fundamental information, and her own research. Both include detailed trade suggestions.
The fee for money wires does not bother me, as I very rarely wire money. In case I need money I take it from the Interactive Brokers account.
The major disadvantage of DeCarley compared to Interactive Brokers for Austrians is that DeCarley is not in a position to offer reporting in Euro. This raises costs for the tax advizer significantly.
In case of further questions, please feel free to ask.