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 The bid/ask is often just wrong, for dozens of seconds, updating with outdated prices, until it catches up with reality (as if it’s draining some queue backlog in a microservice).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.

Slow Data and UX

I do love the interest on cash and rates offered for lending shares by Interactive Brokers. It’s a heavy complex interface but has access to the most markets I’ve ever seen, so it might be a function of how slow the platform is as a user. I wish it was more user friendly as a noobie, but I have been learning slowly but surely. So, it’s a barrier to entry, but it’s not insurmountable.

Often when I trade options the rate/price shown is way delayed, and I don’t love having to pay for data providers, but once I do, I truly expect accurate and snappy prices. But instead when I place an order I learn the price was way too high/low after I see the bid/ask after the trade! What good is that??

And then you just get terrible quality of service for some features depending on timing. For instance, I am trying to use the roll option feature, but it’s spinning forever and unusable for any of my positions right 20 mins ago. I tried 4 different positions and nada, so I come back 20 mins later and now it gets past the spinning and gets to the option but screen but none of the prices are painted on the screen. So, again I scratch my head and wonder why I am paying for data packages which are super complicated and never work. I am starting to regret my decision to move to IBKR, but will give it a few more months to see if it improves before switching to another broker.

Bugs

(1) Certain functions of the app (like withdrawal) open inside a browser within the app, which means that it will ask for secondary authentication using codes that you get from the app. But to get those codes, you have to close out of the withdrawal. By the design of the app, you can either get authentication codes or do a withdrawal, not both at the same time. But yet it still asks you to do both at the same time. So the app is completely useless in providing those functions because you realize you have to do them on a separate browser through the website to be able to authenticate it anyhow.

(2) It times out SO fast. If I’m in the middle of something in the app, then switch to Safari to look something up, then come back to IBKR, it will have timed out and I lose everything I was doing EVEN if I had to switch away for only 15s. Make the timeout around 5m or so. Or you can keep same timeout but just remember what I was in the middle of doing when I reconnect, at least.