More like Interactive Broken, am i rite: A Review of IB

There comes a time in the life of a tradin fool when he or she has gots to explore new territory and try somethin new. Fo a while now, I been tradin with my bros down at scotties. They aight, I mean I been with dem fo a few years now. Decent commissions fo the casual trader and they got a friendly little office right down da road...

I gots to say though, they don't gots a scratch fo all my itches; there be so many tings I wanted to do that I just couldn't do wit my bros down at scotties. (Also, papa-SEC always bustin down my door when they find I been free-ridin on the intraday parade mo times than I should and its easier to do that kinda shit when you got a couple of accounts, you know what I mean?).

So I decided to to take my bidness to Interactive Bros and see what dey was all about. Readin on dey website, they sounded like the shiz:

• Wicked 1-to-4 margin buyin power - I leveraged ur mom last night.
• Tradin application works on Linux - I run Linux cause it gets me da ladeyz.
• Programmin interface - for typin in 1337 c0dez to do my work for me
• Logo consists of dude slingin gang signs - I think he Bloods given he all red and shit.

Tippy wicked. So first thing I try out is dey programmin interface. I downed me a copy of IB's Trader Workstation appy and grabbed IBpy offa Goocodez. I got all excited and shiz and started writen some mad skrips for all my tradin strategies. I was thinkin the codez could be hashin out my forex spreads while I hittin the hashish with mah peepz on Wally-ave, but then shit hit the fan... it turns out Interactive BROKEN aint let you do automated tradin... dey make you type some shit in da appy every 24 hours else the appy self-caps itself:

fuck that shit, yo. Fo me to fully automate this bidness, I had to talk to some of my peepz about typin in new timez and hittin update while I aint around.

That's automated tradin, IB style.

After all that majo failo, I decided to check out da regular tradin interface on the Trader Workstation appy. I fancy myself smart on the computer bidness but damn, this interface didn't self-explanimate too well. I thought I might want to buy some put options on Merryl Lynch last week cause I got that funny feelin they had some skeletons up dey closets we dun know about yet. I look around fo a "buy" button cause its time to buy some of dem tasty July puts. No button to be found, I figure "aight, maybe if I click on the 'bid' column... cause you know, I wanna make a bid fo dem puts". So I hit da 'bid' cell on my MER line and boom, some text field appears, I enter some numbas and hit this big "T" that shows up (meanin "transactify", I suppose). I feelin pretty good about myself and I start watchin MER as tigers get let out of bags then BOOM, I get a bailmail sayin "MARGIN CALL, BIATCH! BID MEANS SELL ON OUR STREET" and I all scramblin to close this short position I accidentally done manifested up in that piece and I all stressin out and shit. Man that shit IS NOT COOL, YO, NOT COOL!

But you know me, I'm a soldier, I got through that shit, traded them nasty ends back into dividends and am back in bidness... but FUCK, man...

So anyway, Interactive Bros is aight, but they got some shit to fix. Peace.