Complete Prime Broker Solutions
Helping hedge funds, asset managers, endowments, non-profits, and institutional investors meet the demands of a rapidly evolving market
- Around-the-clock global service coverage for Prime Brokerage customers.
- Strong balance sheet.
- Strength and security.
- Low-risk business model.
- Customer fund protection.
- Consistent performance.
- Custody.
- Execution and clearing.
- Securities financing.
- Margin financing.
- Take up trades from other brokers.
- Corporate actions.
- Customer service.
Financial Strength and Stability
Our custodian's strong capital position, conservative balance sheet and automated risk controls help protect IB and our clients from large trading losses.
Lower Your Costs to Maximize Your Return
Our transparent, low commissions and financing rates, and best price executions minimize your costs to help you maximize your returns.
Stock Yield Enhancement Program
Earn extra income on the fully-paid shares of stock held in your account by joining
Our custodian’s Stock Yield Enhancement Program.
Benefits
Each day that your stock is on loan, our custodian deposits a percentage of any loan income directly into your account.
You will see the loaned shares on your account statement, indicating that they are being loaned out. You are still the owner of the stock, which means you continue to have market risk and will recognize any profit (or any loss) if the stock price moves. You can sell your shares at any time without any restriction. You can terminate your participation at any time for any reason.
Example
Innovative Technology
Work with a Prime Broker who's building trading technology that provides competitive pricing, speed, size, diversity
of global products and advanced trading tools for 39 years.
- Optimize your trading speed and efficiency with our market maker-designed Trader Workstation (TWS).
- Access order management, analytics, account monitoring and more in a simple but sophisticated workspace.
- Built-in task-specific trading tools and advanced risk management and option pricing applications for any trading style.
Advanced Trading Tools
Our suite of Option Labs and advanced trading tools offer support to help you discover and implement optimal trading strategies. For example, our Probability Lab offers a practical way to think about options without the complicated mathematics, and the Option Strategy Lab lets you create simple and complex multi-leg option orders based on your own price and volatility forecast.
Order Types and Algos
Trader Workstation (TWS) supports over 60 order types, from the most basic limit order to advanced trading to the most complex algorithmic trading, to help you execute a wide variety of trading strategies.
Our¹ proprietary API and FIX CTCI solutions let institutions create their own automated rule-based trading system that takes advantage of our high-speed order routing and broad market depth.
Real-time market-risk management and real-time monitoring provide a comprehensive measure of risk exposure across multiple asset classes around the globe and real-time data that gives you the edge you need to react quickly to the markets.
Our¹ Order Management System makes it easy to submit, stage, manage and track client orders whether they are received electronically via FIX, input directly by traders or placed over the phone.
Our¹ User Access Rights system allows you to assign different managerial roles and client accounts to individual employees within your organization.
Optimize your trading speed and efficiency with our Trader Station
Mosaic
Classic
- Use the Portfolio window for at-a-glance account summary and position detail, the Order Entry window to formulate and transmit orders instantly, and the Order Monitor to track and
- modify live orders and review filled and cancelled orders.
- Create attached orders directly within the Orders panel, including bracket, stop limit, profit taker, One Cancels Other, beta, FX order and pair hedging orders.
- Add multiple Watchlists to view groups of instruments and create customized Market Scanners.
- Add gradients, lines and bars to Market Scanners for easy-to spot trends and patterns.
- View interactive, customizable charts that support studies and trendlines.
- View real-time streaming general news that you can filter by subject, as well as real-time streaming news for a selected underlying.
- Enhance Mosaic with premium newswire and analyst research subscriptions from such tier-one providers as Reuters, Dow Jones, Morningstar and Zacks.
- Customize the workspace to suit your own trading needs by snapping your favorite trading tools together.
- Link windows and symbol action by color using the grouping blocks, and watch the symbol automatically change in every linked window when you change the symbol in one window.
Real-Time Monitoring
Our real-time monitoring system lets you see the current state of your account at any time to give you the edge you need in changing market conditions.
View account balances, margin, funds available for trading, market value and portfolio data for all of your products in the customizable, easy-to-read Account window.
Stay on top of your margin requirements with quick-glance summaries of potential deficiencies that help you avoid liquidation, and try “what if” Portfolio Margining to see your margin requirements using the Portfolio Margining system.
See daily executions as well as net trading activity by symbol in our expandable trade reports.
Create Watchlists to monitor real-time market quotes based on your market data subscriptions. Create, resize and move multiple named Watchlist windows to fit your own trading style.
Create real-time alerts based on price, time, margin and volume that notify you of important changes in the market.
View P&L on your trading screen and in the Account window.
New Algos
Advanced order types help enter and exit positions with minimal price impact.
- Algos allow clients to fine tune the execution and timing of their larger orders to minimize the price impact.
- We now offer 12 IB Algos after adding 4 new ones this year
- We now offer a total of 18 Jeffries algos and 18 CSFB algos to our clients
Support for Price Improvement and Incremental Alpha Generation
- Marketable orders ping all available liquidity pools to support best price execution. Non-marketable orders dynamically search liquidity pools to balance economics
- Our custodian hosts resting orders on its ATS to protect your anonymity and support best price execution. This allows the order to mix with incoming marketable orders or a well-vetted group of liquidity providers.
- Use our sophisticated routing to calibrate and set customized preferences for balancing probability of execution against minimizing venue fees (e.g. maximize fill, prefer fill, maximize rebate, prefer rebate).
- Our custodian does not trade against your order and can randomize price and/or size increments to help protect your trading strategies.
Active Traders Executing Large Orders Use our custodian's Advanced Trading Technology, Firm-developed Algorithms and to Secure Liquidity on Better Terms.
All of our custodian's algorithms are available via API and a majority via FIX. Each allows for user-defined order urgency and volume percentage participation levels that can be saved for future use.
- Broker assisted trading is ideal when you are away from your computer or want the support of an experienced broker. Each broker on our trade desk has over 20 years trading experience and attempts to achieve the best possible execution for your trades.
- Traders requiring liquidity in excess of 10K shares or 100 contracts per option leg for stock and options trading can benefit from our network of upstairs liquidity providers. Our trade desk may be able to find price improvement or additional liquidity compared to the electronic NBBO for orders in even the most liquid option classes and ETFs.
POPULAR ALGOS INCLUDE:
Accumulate/Distribute: Allows a trader to create bespoke trade parameters for size or price increments, which may be helpful when trading large block orders.
Percentage of Volume: A suite of highly customizable volume participation strategies for use under a variety of market conditions:
- Percent Volume Strategy allows a trader to participate in volume at a user-defined rate. Volume percentages are set for the day with continuously updated intraday forecasts.
- Price Volume Strategy defines participation by the price of a security. This algo will adjust aggressiveness based upon the price of a security relative to a user-defined target.
- Size Volume Strategy allows a trader to set passive or aggressive approaches to trading a block order through the day using a user-defined rate.
- Traders have the option of placing Immediate or Cancel (IOC) or limit orders that will ping all available liquidity in an effort to fill the order.
- Remaining balances rest on the our custodian's ATS, maintaining anonymity, while retaining the option of filling the order with another one of our custodians customer’s order.
- The algo pings external liquidity providers every minute until filling the order.
Dark Ice: This order type is particularly useful when markets are range bound. It seeks price improvement by randomizing size increments and by pricing the order one tick lower than the current offer for buy orders and one tick higher than the current bid for sell orders. The algo probes liquidity on IBATS, a dozen dark pools and then exchanges.
Trader Workstation Supported Algorithms and Order Types
Important Information
Please note that exchanges and regulators require brokers to impose various pre-trade filters and other checks to make sure that orders are not disruptive to the market and do not violate exchange rules. Exchanges also apply their own filters and limits to orders they receive.
Comprehensive Reporting
Easy to view and customize, our statements and reports cover all aspects of your Interactive Brokers account.
PortfolioAnalyst, our online reporting and analysis interface, lets you analyze the performance of your account portfolio online by creating and saving customizable PDF reports based on a set of measurement criteria and optionally comparing the data to selected industry benchmarks.
Run and customize activity statements to view detailed information about your account activity, including positions, cash balances, transactions, and more.
Create statement templates called Flex Queries, which let you customize your activity data at the most granular level and download in XML or text format.
Save your statements in PDF or Excel format, or download them to a variety of third-party formats such as Quicken, Tradelog or CapTools.
Daily margin reports detail requirements by underlying.
Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA)
TCA tracks the quality of your orders’ transaction prices versus market conditions either at the time the orders were submitted or after the trade executes.
Tax Optimizer lets you change your tax lot-matching method to optimize your gains and losses.
Expanded Research Offerings
86 research providers available via the Investors’ Marketplace
Over 30 research subscriptions available to clients in TWS
Hedge Fund Capital Introduction Program
Our online program lets you market your funds to our custodian clients.
The program offers these benefits to participating Hedge Funds:
- Our custodian has a sophisticated, high-net worth client base who may be eligible and interested in placing a portion of their portfolio with your fund.
- Access to our custodian’s Hedge Fund Marketplace (for participating Hedge Funds and participating investors) is through a separate and secure, password-protected area of the custodian's website. The Hedge Fund Marketplace is designed to comply with SEC rules limiting solicitation for private placements.
- Participating Funds can post basic information about the Fund, the Fund manager and the Fund strategy. Potential investors can view and download related documentation, including private placement memoranda and subscription information.
- Eligible Accredited Investors and Qualified Purchasers may contact the Fund management company directly through the Hedge Fund Marketplace, or request that the Fund contact them.
- Once an investor has completed the Fund’s documentation, our custodian will process transfers of funds from the investor’s housed brokerage account directly to the Fund’s account, and our custodian will also process withdrawals/redemptions with the approval of the Fund and its Third-Party Administrator.
- There is no need to open a new IB account to participate in the program. Simply access the Hedge Fund Marketplace to provide additional information required to join the program.
- Hedge Funds and their Third Party Administrators use secure passwords to complete many automated administrative functions, including the ability to upload new Fund documentation, track downloads, require minimum investment sizes, identify a Fund as open or closed to new investments, and approve new investments or withdrawals/redemptions.
Account Structures - Single Fund
Single Fund Account StructureA single fund managed by an investment manager.
Single Fund Account with Trading Strategy Sub Accounts Structure
When adding trading strategy sub accounts, the account structure will have the following characteristics:
- Master, sub accounts and users are part of the same legal entity.
- Funds are deposited in the master account and transferred between the master and sub accounts to control individual trader limits.
- Initial margining is determined for each individual account, while maintenance margining is determined at a consolidated account level.
- Master users can set trading limits on individual sub accounts based on order size and value.
Account Structures - Multiple Fund Account
Multiple Fund Account Structure
Multiple funds managed by an investment manager with a master fund admin account.
The investment manager can add separately managed client accounts.
Account Structures - Allocation (Give-up) Fund Account
Allocation (Give-Up) Fund Account Structure
A single allocation account for trade executions that allows for end of day give-up of trades to accounts at third-party prime brokers.
An Allocation (Give-Up) account contains multiple co-mingled funds managed by an investment manager, who maintains individual fund activity function separately or gives up to a third-party prime broker.
Disclosures: Where ever you see "Our" we are referring to our custodian in that of Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers LLC is a member of NYSE, FINRA, SIPC. Hedge Funds are highly speculative and investors may lose their entire investment. Lower investment costs will increase your overall return on investment, but lower costs do not guarantee that your investment will be profitable. Any trading symbols displayed are for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to portray recommendations. Supporting documentation for any claims and statistical information will be provided upon request.
