Help with understanding Interactive Broker fees, for first-time investor

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: mvr_of_mntns Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/127556 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Interactive Brokers says that clients with less than USD 2,000 in account balance are charged USD 20 (monthly) if they don’t generate a minimum of USD 20 in commissions (monthly). It also says: US Stock Fee contributes to USD 0.005 in commissions, per trade ( reference ) So does this mean I need to buy/sell 4,000 US shares per month (USD 20 commission / USD 0.005 commission) per month?

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Bob Baerker Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/127561 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. IBKR charges 50 cents per 100 shares so yes, you would have to trade 4,000 shares per month to avoid the monthly fee. However, there is also a $1 minimum ticket fee so if you are going to trade 100 shares at a time (20 trades), you would only have to trade 2,000 shares per month. Note that IBKR offers a Lite version which charges no commissions. I don't know what the minimum account size for that is so I don't know if that's a better choice for you. Check it out.