With IAB, a small player (5k+ in IRA or 10k+ in normal account) can trade on terms comparable to what a mid-sized fund can get.
When it comes to financial assets, I'd rather pay an established player $1 per trade than a fly-by-night operation $0.
At my last check it was mostly geared towards C++/Java with less than ideal documentation. However there are some good open source wrappers available (Python): https://github.com/blampe/IbPy
As stated in the parent comment, the minimum account balance is $10k.
Although (I had a 404), I think it's actually: https://github.com/InteractiveBrokers/tws-api-public
Indeed the PDT requirement is a pain...
Specifically for options trading, they have incredibly low commissions, and instant execution. I was always impressed by their SDK and tools they exposed. I used the Java toolkit, I never made anything substantial in it though. They are extremely security focused as well.
Also good for options trading too.
Yeah, that's understating it. Here's the interest rate on a $100,000 margin loan:
Interactive Brokers 1.09%
Schwab 6.875%
TD Ameritrade 7.25%
Fidelity 6.575%
Scottrade 6.50%
Etrade 6.14%
not that one should ever go on margin
if you don't know what you are doing
It was announced on October 10, 2008,
that McClendon sold approximately 33.4
million shares, approximately 90% of his
stock in Chesapeake Energy (stock symbol CHK),
for $16.52 per share to meet a margin call
after the drop in the U.S. stock market
that week. The stock had been worth as much
as $74.00 per share in the year prior to the
sale, a loss of nearly $1.92 billion.