IBKR Mobile - Invest Worldwide 4+

Good app with problems, excellent broker

IBKR’s iPhone app is far better for trading and for checking portfolio, browsing options prices, and looking at the market with watch lists, than Robinhood’s or Fidelity’s. They’re what I use for watchlists and to peruse options prices, even if I’ll end up trading on other brokers’ phone apps. It’s miles better. As for the broker, IBKR Pro has easily paid for itself and migrating to it has been objectively profitable for me. This is because of its better access to markets and trading hours allowing me to place certain trades. I’ve also been happy enough with trade execution and commissions costs.

The problem: after reading reviews, I started paying closer attention to the prices I see quoted. The bid/ask is often just wrong, for dozens of seconds, updating with outdated prices, until it catches up with reality (as if it’s draining some queue backlog in a microservice). You’ll see the bid/ask and the last trade price be out of sync, the last trade price being, as far as I can tell, correct. I verified the price with other brokers. This is less big of deal for stocks than with options, of course.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your kind words about us. We are sorry to hear you are experiencing market data issues. Please email us at itws@ibkr.com with more details, and we will be happy to investigate.

Does not play well with password managers

I really like this app as a trading platform, but it is very frustrating to login with trading permissions. Firstly, it defaults to login without trading permissions and you are prompted to enter your password for trading or account management. Then the lack of compatibility with password managers flexes it’s ugly head. I use LastPass and the problem is twofold: launching lastpass from the app prompt does not display my IB entry I have to search for it, and after selecting my IB entry I’m returned to the app without the password populated and in fact the password prompt is gone. This means I have to switch to lastpass, find IB, copy the password then go back to IB, trigger the password prompt and paste the password. Overall it’s a frustrating, broken user experience.

Horrible app

1. Log in is super frustrating. It takes forever, it logs you in many times without trading permissions, and often it just gets stuck on the “connecting” message after you enter your credentials and never logs in. 2. The functionality on the app for trade types is more extensive than the web interface. Which tells me that they have developed these two interfaces completely independently of each other and thus the user experience is not uniform across both. This is an antiquated approach from the dot com bubble days. They need to completely revamp their approach to Omni channel 3. The data on your portfolio is extremely inaccurate. It has some value for net gain or loss for the day and when you trade a stock at market the actual net profit loss changes dramatically, telling me that the data is not correct. 4. Customer service is impossible to reach. 5. Would you believe that the browser based website does not have Trail Limit order functionality while this is available on the Mobile App? Just unbelievable how their IT has built the web and mobile versions completely independently of each other. They really are in the 1970s of web development.

Developer Response ,

Hi,

We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience caused. We have fixed #5 from the list of given issues. Could you please share more details about rest of the items? Please share details with the developers directly at itws@ibkr.com so that we can better understand what’s going on and fix the issues as soon as possible.