I think that my answer here is pretty nuanced, and it is that most people I talk to should over the majority of their lives be using something like Wealthfront or a Vanguard target date retirement fund, but I also talk to folks who have quirky life circumstances as a function of how the technology industry works, and those folks would potentially benefit materially from IB.

Here's about as much as I can say publicly before I start getting worried about social dynamics: if you will, at some point in the next 20 years, own millions of dollars of stock as a function of your employment, you should be radically more interested in Interactive Brokers than a similarly situated technologist who does not have some of the needs implied by that.

Why Wealthfront over FZROX and FNILX?

I switched from Wealthfront to these Fidelity index funds since they're free and seem to do basically the same thing (also convenient to just have everything in one place and Fidelity is where my 401k is anyway).

Wealthfront also added a 'risk-parity' fund which was opt-out that does not follow the same low risk index funds idea (and caused me to trust them less) https://www.pragcap.com/wealthfronts-risk-parity-fund-raw-de....

Thanks, Patrick! I realize your concern re: publicity and social dynamics, so I won't pry any further, but let's say, hypothetically, one ended up in that former group many years from now--how did you seek the financial advice you'd now give to your younger self?

I actually trade a lot with Interactive Brokers, both stocks and options, and their order execution is so good that I was able to do some risk-free arbitrage as late as earlier this year. Basically whatever/however can get filled, they will do as good of a job as anyone else, and basically providing direct access to exchanges and dark pools. Besides that, they also offer several order execution/filling & accumulation algos provided by external firms, such as Jefferies, Fox River and CSFB, which will snipe or accumulate any order quantity available through dark pools, before market opens, after hours, etc. And IB also provides several algos on their own, which will also tap dark pools, accumulate shares based on volatility, VWAP, and whatnot. IB basically specializes in order execution to a level I haven't seen offered from any other brokers. And that's besides offering decent API and lowest commissions in the industry. IB often also has hard-to-borrow shares available for shorting, which are much harder to find through other brokers. Though one contender that I'd like to try and compare to IB, would be Lightspeed.

patio11, if you're reading this, I'd also like to know the answer to that question, and I don't already know.

It's been a while since I've used IB, but they are one of the few retail front ends that offer algorithmic execution.

i.e., instead of showing 1000 shares to the market, it might parcel it out in small chunks to hide your footprint.

Although this typically isn't relevant for most orders, if you are trading something thin, it could be helpful.

Patio11’s comment got me very curious and I’m not sure this quite explains it. If I’m selling millions of dollars worth of a tech stock, would IB give me a materially better price?

Not patio11, but I interpreted that comment of his as referring to this particular part of his blog post:

> A better reason for a technologist to be long a stock a lot of people want to short is because they have earned it through services and, for whatever reason, not sold it. If you own a material amount of stock in a publicly traded technology company, particularly a material amount of stock which is not widely available at the moment, you should probably devote non-zero effort to understanding whether you’re allowed to loan that stock out and, if so, whether your brokerage will pay you to do that.

In other words, if you own millions of dollars of stock in a company but you aren't allowed to sell it or just aren't going to, you may be able to make serious money "for free" just by lending out your shares to short sellers. If your brokerage will pay you to do that, as IB will.

Or maybe hedge against massive losses on it, if you are legally allowed to do that. If I remember correctly, this saved Mark Cuban from ruin, for instance.

Probably also a good idea, although I don't think patio11 said IB is better than other platforms for options.

If you're trying to sell GOOG, which trades a few billion worth every day, no.

If you're trying to sell TEAM (Atlassian), which trades a few hundred million, maybe.

If you're trying to sell something less liquid (which trades a few million of notional - price x volume - then you probably want to go with some kind of algo execution.

i.e., your order size as a percentage of notional traded matters.