Important to note is that the universal account is a US style...

Important to note is that the universal account is a US style margin account. This means that you are an unsecured creditor of IB in the same way Opes clients are. Also your money is in the US (I think). Their clients include hedge funds and maybe one of them could blow up so baddly IB goes bust. So I dont put all my eggs into them. But at least they have no subprime exposure and only deal in clearinghouse products and forex.

That said its very good and quite an education to see what they have. A Data fees for US are $10/month if you dont spend that in brokerage. So effectively free for US stocks, most US futures.

There is little customer service and they rely on lots of computer programming. Everything is real time. There are no margin calls the computer closes positions in real time if you go over. That applys to hedge funds too which is good to know.

Main problem is you some exchanges have to be subscribed to for data. Most are fairly cheap. The outstanding exception is the ASX !