BACKGROUND

IBKR offers eligible clients the option of receiving a real-time price quote for a single instrument on a request basis. This service, referred to as “Snapshot Quotes” differs from the traditional quote services which offer continuous streaming and updates of real-time prices. Snapshot Quotes are offered as a low-cost alternative to clients who do not trade regularly and require data from specific exchanges¹ when submitting an order. Additional details regarding this quote service is provided below. 

QUOTE COMPONENTS

The Snapshot quote includes the following data:        

• Last price
• Last size
• Last exchange
• Current bid-ask
• Size for each of current bid-ask
• Exchange for each of current bid-ask 

AVAILABLE SERVICES

¹In accordance with regulatory requirements, IBKR no longer offers delayed quotation information on U.S. equities to Interactive Brokers LLC clients. All clients (IBKR Lite and Pro) have access to streaming real-time US equity quotes from Cboe One and IEX at no charge. Since this data does not include all markets, IB does not show this quote when entering parameters for an order in a US stock quote. IB customers are able to access a snapshot of real-time quote information for US stocks at the point of order entry.

²Cost is per snapshot quote request and will be assessed in the Base Currency equivalent, if not USD.

ELIGIBILITY

• Accounts must maintain the Market Data Subscription Minimum and Maintenance Equity Balance Requirements in order to qualify for Snapshot quotes.
• The Users must operate TWS Build 976.0 or higher to access Snapshot quote functionality.

PRICING DETAILS

• Clients will receive $1.00 of snapshot quotes free of charge each month. Free snaphots may be applied to either U.S. or non-U.S. quote requests and charges will be applied, without additional notice, once the free allocation has been exhausted. Clients may review their snapshot usage as of the close of each business day via the Client Portal.
• Quote fees are assessed on a lag basis, generally in the first week after the month in which Snapshot services were provided. Accounts which do not have sufficient cash or Equity With Loan Value to cover the monthly fee will be subject to position liquidations.
• The monthly fee for snapshots will be capped at the related streaming real-time monthly service price. At which time the streaming quotes will be provided at no additional cost for the remainder of the month.  The switch to streaming quotes will take place at approximately 18:30 EST the following business day after reaching the snapshot threshold. At the close of the month, the streaming service will automatically terminate and the snapshot counter will reset. Each service is capped independently of the others and quote requests for one service cannot be counted towards the cap of another. See table below for sample details.

Title:

How are executions allocated when an order receives a partial fill because an insufficient quantity is available to complete the allocation of shares/contracts to sub-accounts?

Overview:

From time-to-time, one may experience an allocation order which is partially executed and is canceled prior to being completed (i.e. market closes, contract expires, halts due to news, prices move in an unfavorable direction, etc.). In such cases, IB determines which customers (who were originally included in the order group and/or profile) will receive the executed shares/contracts. The methodology used by IB to impartially determine who receives the shares/contacts in the event of a partial fill is described in this article.

Background:

Before placing an order CTAs and FAs are given the ability to predetermine the method by which an execution is to be allocated amongst client accounts. They can do so by first creating a group (i.e. ratio/percentage) or profile (i.e. specific amount) wherein a distinct number of shares/contracts are specified per client account (i.e. pre-trade allocation). These amounts can be prearranged based on certain account values including the clients’ Net Liquidation Total, Available Equity, etc., or indicated prior to the order execution using Ratios, Percentages, etc. Each group and/or profile is generally created with the assumption that the order will be executed in full. However, as we will see, this is not always the case. Therefore, we are providing examples that describe and demonstrate the process used to allocate partial executions with pre-defined groups and/or profiles and how the allocations are determined.

Here is the list of allocation methods with brief descriptions about how they work.

·         AvailableEquity
Use sub account’ available equality value as ratio. 

·         NetLiq
Use subaccount’ net liquidation value as ratio

·         EqualQuantity
Same ratio for each account

·         PctChange¹:Portion of the allocation logic is in Trader Workstation (the initial calculation of the desired quantities per account).

·         Profile

The ratio is prescribed by the user

Basic Examples:

Details:

CTA/FA has 3-clients with a predefined profile titled “XYZ commodities” for orders of 50 contracts which (upon execution) are allocated as follows:

Account (A) = 25 contracts

Account (B) = 15 contracts

Account (C) = 10 contracts

Example #1:

CTA/FA creates a DAY order to buy 50 Sept 2016 XYZ future contracts and specifies “XYZ commodities” as the predefined allocation profile. Upon transmission at 10 am (ET) the order begins to execute²but in very small portions and over a very long period of time. At 2 pm (ET) the order is canceled prior to being executed in full. As a result, only a portion of the order is filled (i.e., 7 of the 50 contracts are filled or 14%). For each account the system initially allocates by rounding fractional amounts down to whole numbers:

Account (A) = 14% of 25 = 3.5 rounded down to 3

Account (B) = 14% of 15 = 2.1 rounded down to 2

Account (C) = 14% of 10 = 1.4 rounded down to 1

To Summarize:

A: initially receives 3 contracts, which is 3/25 of desired (fill ratio = 0.12)

B: initially receives 2 contracts, which is 2/15 of desired (fill ratio = 0.134)

C: initially receives 1 contract, which is 1/10 of desired (fill ratio = 0.10)

The system then allocates the next (and final) contract to an account with the smallest ratio (i.e. Account C which currently has a ratio of 0.10).

A: final allocation of 3 contracts, which is 3/25 of desired (fill ratio = 0.12)

B: final allocation of 2 contracts, which is 2/15 of desired (fill ratio = 0.134)

C: final allocation of 2 contract, which is 2/10 of desired (fill ratio = 0.20)

The execution(s) received have now been allocated in full.

Example #2:

CTA/FA creates a DAY order to buy 50 Sept 2016 XYZ future contracts and specifies “XYZ commodities” as the predefined allocation profile. Upon transmission at 11 am (ET) the order begins to be filled³ but in very small portions and over a very long period of time. At 1 pm (ET) the order is canceled prior being executed in full. As a result, only a portion of the order is executed (i.e., 5 of the 50 contracts are filled or 10%).For each account, the system initially allocates by rounding fractional amounts down to whole numbers:

Account (A) = 10% of 25 = 2.5 rounded down to 2

Account (B) = 10% of 15 = 1.5 rounded down to 1

Account (C) = 10% of 10 = 1 (no rounding necessary)

To Summarize:

A: initially receives 2 contracts, which is 2/25 of desired (fill ratio = 0.08)

B: initially receives 1 contract, which is 1/15 of desired (fill ratio = 0.067)

C: initially receives 1 contract, which is 1/10 of desired (fill ratio = 0.10)

The system then allocates the next (and final) contract to an account with the smallest ratio (i.e. to Account B which currently has a ratio of 0.067).

A: final allocation of 2 contracts, which is 2/25 of desired (fill ratio = 0.08)

B: final allocation of 2 contracts, which is 2/15 of desired (fill ratio = 0.134)

C: final allocation of 1 contract, which is 1/10 of desired (fill ratio = 0.10)

The execution(s) received have now been allocated in full.

Example #3:

CTA/FA creates a DAY order to buy 50 Sept 2016 XYZ future contracts and specifies “XYZ commodities” as the predefined allocation profile. Upon transmission at 11 am (ET) the order begins to be executed²  but in very small portions and over a very long period of time. At 12 pm (ET) the order is canceled prior to being executed in full. As a result, only a portion of the order is filled (i.e., 3 of the 50 contracts are filled or 6%). Normally the system initially allocates by rounding fractional amounts down to whole numbers, however for a fill size of less than 4 shares/contracts, IB first allocates based on the following random allocation methodology.

In this case, since the fill size is 3, we skip the rounding fractional amounts down.

For the first share/contract, all A, B and C have the same initial fill ratio and fill quantity, so we randomly pick an account and allocate this share/contract. The system randomly chose account A for allocation of the first share/contract.

To Summarize³:

A: initially receives 1 contract, which is 1/25 of desired (fill ratio = 0.04)

B: initially receives 0 contracts, which is 0/15 of desired (fill ratio = 0.00)

C: initially receives 0 contracts, which is 0/10 of desired (fill ratio = 0.00)

Next, the system will perform a random allocation amongst the remaining accounts (in this case accounts B & C, each with an equal probability) to determine who will receive the next share/contract.

The system randomly chose account B for allocation of the second share/contract.

A: 1 contract, which is 1/25 of desired (fill ratio = 0.04)

B: 1 contract, which is 1/15 of desired (fill ratio = 0.067)

C: 0 contracts, which is 0/10 of desired (fill ratio = 0.00)

The system then allocates the final [3] share/contract to an account(s) with the smallest ratio (i.e. Account C which currently has a ratio of 0.00).

A: final allocation of 1 contract, which is 1/25 of desired (fill ratio = 0.04)

B: final allocation of 1 contract, which is 1/15 of desired (fill ratio = 0.067)

C: final allocation of 1 contract, which is 1/10 of desired (fill ratio = 0.10)

The execution(s) received have now been allocated in full.

Available allocation Flags

Besides the allocation methods above, user can choose the following flags, which also influence the allocation:

·         Strict per-account allocation.
For the initially submitted order if one or more subaccounts are rejected by the credit checking, we reject the whole order.

·         “Close positions first”¹.This is the default handling mode for all orders which close a position (whether or not they are also opening position on the other side or not). The calculation are slightly different and ensure that we do not start opening position for one account if another account still has a position to close, except in few more complex cases.

Other factor affects allocations:

1)      Mutual Fund: the allocation has two steps. The first execution report is received before market open. We allocate based onMonetaryValue for buy order and MonetaryValueShares for sell order. Later, when second execution report which has the NetAssetValue comes, we do the final allocation based on first allocation report.

2)      Allocate in Lot Size: if a user chooses (thru account config) to prefer whole-lot allocations for stocks, the calculations are more complex and will be described in the next version of this document.

3)      Combo allocation¹: we allocate combo trades as a unit, resulting in slightly different calculations.

4)      Long/short split¹: applied to orders for stocks, warrants or structured products. When allocating long sell orders, we only allocate to accounts which have long position: resulting in calculations being more complex.

5)      For non-guaranteed smart combo: we do allocation by each leg instead of combo.

6)      In case of trade bust or correction¹: the allocations are adjusted using more complex logic.

7)      Account exclusion¹: Some subaccounts could be excluded from allocation for the following reasons, no trading permission, employee restriction, broker restriction, RejectIfOpening, prop account restrictions, dynamic size violation, MoneyMarketRules restriction for mutual fund. We do not allocate to excluded accountsand we cancel the order after other accounts are filled. In case of partial restriction (e.g. account is permitted to close but not to open, or account has enough excess liquidity only for a portion of the desired position).

Footnotes:

1.        Details of these calculations will be included in the next revision of this document.

2.        To continue observing margin in each account on a real-time basis, IB allocates each trade immediately (behind the scenes) however from the CTA and/or FA (or client’s) point of view, the final distribution of the execution at an average price typically occurs when the trade is executed in full, is canceled or at the end of day (whichever happens first).

3.       If no account has a ratio greater than 1.0 or multiple accounts are tied in the final step (i.e. ratio = 0.00), the first step is skipped and allocation of the first share/contract is decided via step two (i.e. random allocation).

您必須回答問卷上的所有問題，方可被定義為非專業人士。鑑於交易所要求供應商明確獲得客戶為非專業人士的證明，若問卷回答不完整或不清晰，客戶將被界定為專業投資者，直至其身份得到確認。

如您的身份有所變更，請聯繫幫助台。

問題解釋：

1)    商業及業務用途

a)    您是否出於業務需要、或代表其他商業實體接收財經信息（包括關於證券、商品及其他金融產品的新聞或價格數據）？

解釋：除個人用途外，您是否代表公司或其他組織接收及使用本賬戶中的市場數據？

b)    您是否代表公司、合夥企業、專業信託機構、專業投資俱樂部或其他實體開展證券、商品或外匯交易？

解釋：您只代表個人交易，還是也代表機構（如，有限責任公司、有限責任企業、股份有限公司、公司、有限責任合夥企業等）交易？

c)    您是否就以下事項與其他實體或個人達成過協議：(a) 分享交易活動的盈利，或(b)獲取交易酬勞？

解釋：您是否通過交易獲得酬勞，或與第三方實體或個人分享交易活動的盈利？

d)    您是否通過交易換取辦公場所、設備或其他福利？或者，您是否擔任任意個人、企業或商業實體的財務顧問？

解釋：您是否以任意形式從第三方獲得交易的酬勞，該酬勞不一定以貨幣的形式支付。

2)    擔任職務

a)    目前您是否擔任任何投資顧問或經紀交易商的職務？

解釋：您是否通過管理第三方的資產或指導他人如何管理資產獲得酬勞？

b)    您是否擔任證券、商品或外匯方面的資產管理人？         

解釋：您是否通過管理證券、商品或外匯資產獲得酬勞？

c)     目前您是否在工作中使用此類財經信息，或將其用於管理您的雇主或公司的資產？

解釋：您使用數據是否單純出於商業目的，即，用於管理您的雇主及/或公司的資產？

d)    您交易時是否使用了其他個人或實體的資金？

解釋：您的賬戶中除了您個人的資產，是否有其他實體的資產？

3)    向其他任意實體傳播、再發布或提供數據

a)    您是否以任意方式向任意第三方傳播、再傳播、發布或提供任何從服務中獲得的財經信息？

解釋：您是否以任意形式向其他實體發送您從我方獲得的任何數據？

4)    合資格的專業證券/期貨交易商

a)    目前，您是否為任意證券機構、商品或期貨市場的註冊或合資格的專業證券交易員，或為任意國家交易所、監管機構、專業協會或公認專業機構的投資顧問？^{i, ii}
是☐             否☐

i) 監管機構的例子包括但不限於：

• 美國證券交易委員會（SEC）
• 美國商品期貨交易委員會（CFTC）
• 英國金融服務局（FSA）
• 日本金融服務局（JFSA）

ii) 自律組織（SROs）的例子包括但不限於：

• 美國紐約證券交易所（NYSE）
• 美國金融業監管局（FINRA）
• 瑞士聯邦金融局（VQF）

Each question on the questionnaire must be answered in order to have a non-professional designation. As exchanges require positive confirmations of proof for non-professional designations, an incomplete or unclear Non-Professional Questionnaire will result in a Professional designation until the status can be confirmed. 

If the status should change, please contact the helpdesk.

Explanation of questions:

1)    Commercial & Business purposes

a)    Do you receive financial information (including news or price data concerning securities, commodities and other financial instruments) for your business or any other commercial entity?

Explanation: Are you receiving and using the market data for use on behalf of a company or other organization aside from using the data on this account for personal use?

b)    Are you conducting trading of any securities, commodities or forex for the benefit of a corporation, partnership, professional trust, professional investment club or other entity?

Explanation: Are you trading for yourself only or are you trading on behalf of an organization (Ltd, LLC, GmbH, Co., LLP, Corp.)?

c)    Have you entered into any agreement to (a) share the profit of your trading activities or (b) receive compensation for your trading activities?

Explanation: Are you being compensated to trade or are you sharing profits from your trading activities with a third party entity or individual?

d)    Are you receiving office space, and equipment or other benefits in exchange for your trading or work as a financial consultant to any person, firm or business entity?

Explanation: Are you being compensated in any way for your trading activity by a third party, not necessarily by being paid in currency.

2)    Act in a capacity

a)    Are you currently acting in any capacity as an investment adviser or broker dealer?

Explanation: Are you being compensated to manage third party assets or compensated to advise others on how to manage their assets?

b)    Are you engaged as an asset manager for securities, commodities or forex?         
 

Explanation: Are you being compensated to manage securities, commodities, or forex?

c)     Are you currently using this financial information in a business capacity or for managing your employer’s or company’s assets?

Explanation: Are you using data at all for a commercial purposes specifically to manage your employer and/or company assets?

d)    Are you using the capital of any other individual or entity in the conduct of your trading?

Explanation: Are there assets of any other entity in your account other than your own?

3)    Distribute, republish or provide data to any other party

a)    Are you distributing, redistributing, publishing, making available or otherwise providing any financial information from the service to any third party in any manner?

Explanation: Are you sending any data you receive from us to another party in any way, shape, or form?

4)    Qualified professional securities / futures trader

a)    Are you currently registered or qualified as a professional securities trader with any security agency, or with any commodities or futures contract market or investment adviser with any national or state exchange, regulatory authority, professional association or recognized professional body? ^{i, ii}
YES☐             NO☐

i) Examples of Regulatory bodies include, but are not limited to,

• US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
• UK Financial Service Authority (FSA)
• Japanese Financial Service Agency (JFSA)

ii) Examples of Self-Regulatory Organization (SROs) include, but are not limited to:

• US NYSE
• US FINRA
• Swiss VQF