Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IB) is an online discount brokerage firm in the United States. The company traces its origin to 1977 when Thomas Peterffy

Thomas Peterffy

Thomas Peterffy is the founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer of Interactive Brokers .-Biography:Thomas Peterffy was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944. He emigrated to the United States in 1965. When he first moved to New York City, he did not speak English.He started his...

 bought a seat on the American Stock Exchange

American Stock Exchange

NYSE Amex Equities, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange is an American stock exchange situated in New York. AMEX was a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was known as the New York Curb Exchange. On January 17, 2008, NYSE Euronext announced it would acquire the...

 as an individual market maker, and formed T.P. & Co. the following year. Today, the company consists of many subsidiaries around the world, operating on most major stock

Stock

The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...

, futures

Futures contract

In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...

, bonds

Bond (finance)

In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest to use and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity...

, forex, and options

Option (finance)

In finance, an option is a derivative financial instrument that specifies a contract between two parties for a future transaction on an asset at a reference price. The buyer of the option gains the right, but not the obligation, to engage in that transaction, while the seller incurs the...

 exchanges worldwide. The company commenced a public offering on 4 May 2007 under the ticker symbol

Ticker symbol

A stock symbol or ticker symbol is a short abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both. "Ticker symbol" refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker...

  on the Nasdaq

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

 exchange.

Barron's Magazine

Barron's Magazine

Barron's is an American weekly newspaper covering U.S. financial information, market developments, and relevant statistics. Each issue provides a wrap-up of the previous week's market activity, news reports, and an informative outlook on the week to come....

 stated in 2009 that Interactive Brokers maintains a position as the least expensive trading venue for investors, and holds the ranking as the #1 Lowest Cost Broker for the fifth straight year.

Statistics

On its website, IB states that it has consolidated equity capital of over US $4.8 billion, and also states that IB and its affiliates exceed 1,000,000 trades per day and trade 14.1% of the global equity options volume.
As of 2004, the firm's clients were making some 500,000 trades per day on various international markets and accounted for 21.4% of the options trading volume of North America. The parent company, Interactive Brokers Group, maintains offices in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Zug

Zug

Zug , is a German-speaking city in Switzerland. The name ‘Zug’ originates from fishing vocabulary; in the Middle Ages it referred to the right to ‘pull up’ fishing nets and hence to the right to fish.The city of Zug is located in the Canton of Zug and is its capital...

, Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

. IB is regulated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission

United States Securities and Exchange Commission

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is a federal agency which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States...

 and the regulatory policies of all other exchanges on which it trades. The company had revenue

Revenue

In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....

s of $986.89 million USD and income

Income

Income is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified time frame, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings...

 of $36.20 million USD in the twelve month period ending on December 31, 2009. According to the 1st qtr 2010 report, IB states that they have 140,000 customer accounts and over $16.7 billion in client assets.

In 2007, the company issued 40,000,000 shares or approx. 10% of the capital of Brokers Group LLC in a public offering, at a price of US$30.01 per share. The company's shares trade on the Nasdaq

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

 stock exchange.

Software

Trader Workstation (abbreviated TWS) is an electronic trading platform

Electronic trading platform

In finance, an Electronic trading platform is a computer system that can be used to place orders for financial products over a network with a financial intermediary. This includes products such as shares, bonds, currencies, commodities and derivatives with a financial intermediary, such as a...

 built using cross-platform

Cross-platform

In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

 Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 desktop

Desktop computer

A desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer. Early desktop computers are designed to lay flat on the desk, while modern towers stand upright...

 application, similar to the company's WebTrader web application

Web application

A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...

, but is extensible through a proprietary API. TWS software prompts to update itself every few weeks, or a .jar

JAR (file format)

In software, JAR is an archive file format typically used to aggregate many Java class files and associated metadata and resources into one file to distribute application software or libraries on the Java platform.JAR files are built on the ZIP file format and have the .jar file extension...

 file from a consistent URL can be downloaded, which then unpacks to the current version. MobileTrader is a variant intended for personal digital assistants and smartphones.

PaperTrader is a trading platform using Trader Workstation software in a degraded mode, intended either for developers to test a program written for the proprietary Traders Workstation API, or for "paper" traders to experiment with trading in a simulated account, artificially populated with one million dollars, at no cost and with no risk of loss. Any market data

Market data

In finance, market data is quote and trade-related data associated with equity, fixed-income, financial derivatives, currency, and other investment instruments. Market data is numerical price data, reported from trading venues, such as stock exchanges...

subscriptions associated with one's master account are accessible through a paper trading account; a prominent warning appears to remind the user an order is about to be placed in the simulated account.