Interactive Brokers charges higher fees in September as clients margin tops $50B
The electronic brokerage segment at Interactive Brokers LLC (NASDAQ:IBKR), which deals with clearance and settlement of trades for individual and institutional clients globally, today reported a mild rebound in trading volumes for the month ending September 2021.
Interactive Brokers said the number of fee-generating trades hit 2.260 million. That is 16 percent higher than the number of daily average revenue trades, or DARTS, reported in the same month a year ago. Additionally, the US-listed brokerage saw its DARTs increasing by 4 percent from the 2.17 million trades set back in August 2021.
In February, the discount broker’s DARTs hit an all-time high of 3.7 million amid a surge in activity from people stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
IBKR has won more than 43,000 new accounts in September. Total active accounts stood at 1.54 million, or 4 percent higher from 1.49 million accounts in August. The figure was also 57 percent above the previous year’s figure of 981,000 accounts.
IBKR and other brokers saw their client base balloons as volatile markets and renewed stay-at-home restrictions amplified interest in trading from retail investors.
Looking deeper into Interactive Brokers’ latest monthly report, the group’s client margin loans topped $50 billion in September 2021. This figure climbed by two thirds against the $30 billion reported in the year prior and was also higher 1 percent from August 2021.
On average, in September 2021, Interactive Brokers charged clients commission fees of $2.58 per order, up from $2.39 in August. This figure includes exchange, clearing and regulatory fees, with the key products metrics coming out at $1.82 for stocks, $3.70 for equity options and $4.25 for futures orders.
Interactive Brokers has been in the news lately for two different reasons. The first one was the launch of low-cost cryptocurrency trading to its clients via partnership with New York-based exchange and stablecoin issuer, Paxos.
In particular, IBKR has partnered with Paxos to enable customers to buy, hold and sell a handful of crypto assets at a commissions of just 0.12% – 0.18% of trade value, with a $1.75 minimum per order. Plus, there are no added spreads, markups, or custody fees.
Also this week, the company agreed to pay $1.75 million to settle the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s charges that its platform failed to handle oil’s trip into negative pricing in April 2020. The order order included a restitution obligation of $82.57 million (a portion of the $102 million already paid) and the CFTC has acknowledged that IBKR’s previous payments satisfy obligations owed its customers as a result of its systems issues.
