- Experts rate Interactive Brokers Event Contracts highly, noting its extensive global market access and low-cost execution as significant advantages. The platform is praised for its advanced professional-grade tools and unique features like the IBKR ForecastTrader, which appeals to sophisticated traders. However, there are concerns regarding customer service speed for smaller clients, despite the availability of good AI support.
- Across 1375 user reviews on Good Money Guide, averaging 4.6/5, customers frequently highlight the platform's low costs, broad market access, and advanced trading tools. Many users appreciate the user-friendly interface and efficient execution of trades. However, some express frustration with the complexity of the platform and slower customer support responses during peak times.
Interactive Brokers Event Contracts Expert rating
Our expert rating is the average of the areas listed here, each scored out of 5 by our team.Our experts have rated Interactive Brokers Event Contracts across five key areas of our review framework.
- Pricing5.0
- Market Access5.0
- App & Platform5.0
- Customer Service4.0
- Research & Analysis5.0
Pros
- Very low trading costs
- Interest on positions
- Advanced professional-grade tools
Cons
- Risk of complete loss
See full expert review
Our verdict
We rate Interactive Brokers for trading forecast contracts with access to ForecastEx forecast contracts.
Is event contract trading on IBKR any good?
Yes, Interactive Brokers offers extensive global market access, institutional-grade trading platforms and low-cost execution. IBKR ForecastTrader adds a unique forecast-contract feature, appealing to sophisticated traders.
Note: ForecastEx is an IBKR-owned affiliate that is an exchange and clearinghouse for forecast contracts (while IBKR ForecastTrader is the trading platform offered by IBKR where you buy and sell these contracts, as well as ones from the CME).
Pricing and Trade Mechanics: Very cheap: Commission free for IBKR ForecastTrader, and traders earn 3.14% APY on their investment with an interest-like incentive coupon. New accounts get USD 3.00 they can use to trade forecast contracts.
For IBKR ForecastTrader, trading works like this: If an investor purchases a position at USD 0.50 and the market closes at USD 0.50, the daily incentive coupon will be based on USD 0.50. If, on the following day, the market for the same contract closes at USD 0.70, the daily incentive coupon will be based on USD 0.70.
Market Access: Very good, on ForecastEx forecast contracts. Trading is available around the clock, six days a week. Forecast contracts on U.S. elections are only available to eligible U.S. residents.
Apps & Website: Excellent, these contracts can be traded on the dedicated platform of IBKR Forecast Trader or through Interactive Brokers’ platforms Trader Workstation (TWS), IBKR Desktop. IBKR Mobile, or Client Portal.
Customer Service: Fair, good in-house developed AI chatbots and account summaries, however, unless you are a large client you may find it slow to get through on the phone.
Research & Analysis: Excellent, Interactive Brokers has a section of the IBKR ForecastTrader website dedicated to education content to help traders understand these contracts. There are also courses on IBKR Campus Traders’ Academy that cover the fundamentals of forecast contracts and economic forecasts listed on IBKR ForecastTrader.
Resources include an IBKR Campus section on Economic Forecast Contracts, where traders can earn how to read and speculate on economic data points. And a section on Forecast Contracts Fundamentals.
What’s the IBKR ForecastTrader platform like?
You can see the payout of the forecast contracts trading platform from Interactive Brokers in the below screenshot.
Customer reviews for Interactive Brokers
Customer ratings come from reviews left on this site. Every review is read and approved before it is published.Based on 1,375 reviews
- Excellent74%
- Very good14%
- Basic7%
- Poor2%
- Bad2%
Read customer reviews
IBKR INTERNATIONAL
Great worldwide broker
Best overall service and platform
A chose interactive brokers after a long and intensive search for a comprehensive online platform that offers all services I needed. Interactive Brokers ticks all the boxes that are relevant for me.
ISA FX Commission 0.015% vs 1% or more elsewhere - unbeatable for UK investors
I have Stock & Share ISAs with several well known platforms. I also have non-ISA trading accounts. Here I want to specifically commend Interactive Brokers for breaking the 'cartel' pricing of FX within ISAs.
ISAs can only hold GBP, so anyone investing in foreign listed assets has to pay FX commission on every purchase, sale and dividend. The FX commission elsewhere is usually between 1% and 1.5% for trades below GBP5k, the % gradually reducing in a tiered manner as the trade value increases until settling at 0.25% for trades over GBP25k; with IB it is 0.015% irrespective of trade value. Example: buying GPB5k of a NASDAQ stock with most ISA platforms costs at least £50 in FX commission; with Interactive Brokers it costs £0.75. It's the same again when you sell, so £100 FX for the round-trip elsewhere vs £1.50 with IB. Plus, IB offers the full range of order types for ISA trades; none of the "At Best" only nonsense of other ISA platforms.
IB's Trader Workstation trading platform is excellent and can be used for both ISA and non-ISA trading.
Trader workstation -the best trading platform out there
I have been using Interactive Brokers and Trader workstation for over 10 years now. It is my much preferred trading platform and has an amazingly wide array of trading vehicles. It can seem over facing in the beginning but once you know your way around it is the best.
Excellent trading tools
Excellent trading account.
Very good mobile apps.
Excellent value for money and product but very poor customer service
Excellent value for money in terms of the cost of services (including trade commissions and currency exchange) quality of trade execution, algos you can use to trade, research material available, and even the functionality of the website, mobile app and trader workstation (but it takes some getting used to). The cost of competitors seems a little deceptive to me because some competitors offer zero commission but it seems to me their execution is not as good, and so if I save £20 or $20 but pay $500 more for the cost of the shares that's not a good deal for me. However, IBKR customer service is appalling, really bad. They just flat don't answer messages, and if you call they can rarely resolve anything except the simplest issue, and it takes having to escalate to get any kind of response. it is truly astonishing how a company with such good products and pricing have such a bad customer service culture, and the US customer service are the worst because they are often aggressive, dismissive and sometimes b ordering on rude.
Always Delivers
I have a small trading account with IB which I use to access the US market and have found their systems and processes relatively easy to use and the filling of my buy/sell orders to be seamless.
I would recommend them to small investors looking to dip their toes in other markets.
The best product in the UK
The TWS platform is superb with streaming prices and trades. The news service is excellent with access to Dow Jones’s and Refinitiv news wires amongst many others. Live option prices and plenty of customisation opportunities puts it in a different league from the pitiful options available from the UK platforms. Just a shame that they don’t offer full service SIPPs
Exceptional service!
The customer service is excellent anytime I’ve called for any queries. The mobile app is very user friendly and easy to use.
There is no comparison
I have yet to find a comparable trading account to interactive brokers. No one comes close in terms of the breadth of securities or transparency of pricing.
Very convenient for global investments
The platform offers a wide range of products with a wide geographical coverage, probably the best for individual investors. The trading costs are also very competitive.
Excellent trading platform
I have a margin account allowing me to day trade as well as my main trading type of swing trading. The platform is great to use, trades are executed extremely quickly with low commissions.
Awful customer service
Getting in touch with an IB representative is almost impossible . The service is just awful , phones not answered . Over the years I have been with them nothing in this area has improved .
Yes , their fees are excellent and the platform works but if you have a problem then prepare for a frustrating experience.
A really good chart package with plenty of news and detailed information.
I have a Options and Shares account and use Trader Work Station. Really enjoy the risk and reward profile.
Some chart symbols are hard to find especially the 10 year yield and two year yield.
Ease of use
I have used the IBKR platform for about 3 years having tried out a few others. The interface makes it quite intuitive and user-friendly for a non-professional trader. It also has a huge range of products.
Trading with IBKR
I have two individual accounts for stock trading and options trading. I have traded options for about five years on IBKR. Once you get used to it, the platform is not difficult to use and the helpline is really good. I have about 300k in my trading account, having transferred it from Interactive Investor which I found a real pain, AND they charged me £9.99 a month for holding my account, on a website that was dire! Also the commission charges are extremely reasonable. I am very happy with IBKR.
Trading & Commission
Trading account. Excellent execution and reasonable commission/fees schedule
Exceptional platform
Great access to derivative products, fair margining.
Great trading platform
I am a long time customer of Interactive Brokers and a very satisfied one. Great technology, competitive pricing and professional customer service.
Great Broker, but TWS Needs Improvement: Window Management Issues
I've been using Interactive Brokers for my trading activities, and overall, I find their services excellent. The range of investment options and competitive fees are standout features that make it a top choice for serious investors. However, I do have one significant concern regarding the Trader WorkStation (TWS) platform related to window management.
While the TWS interface itself is well-designed, the way it handles other applications is problematic. When I open TWS, the interface is great. However, if I then open another application, such as an Excel file, it invariably opens behind TWS. This forces me to minimize or move TWS every time I need to access another program, which disrupts my workflow and reduces productivity.
Improving TWS so that other applications open on top of it would significantly enhance the user experience. Despite this drawback, I still highly recommend Interactive Brokers for its other excellent services.
What is ForecastEx ?
ForecastEx is an IBKR-owned affiliate that is an exchange and clearinghouse for forecast contracts (while IBKR ForecastTrader is the trading platform offered by IBKR where you buy and sell these contracts, as well as ones from the CME). ForecastEx is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
How does IBKR ForecastTrader work?
Users are able to buy “yes” or “no” contracts based on stated outcomes for specific indicators.
Contracts are priced in a range between 2 cents to 99 cents, when the forecastthat’s being traded concludes, the winning contract is worth USD 1.00.
While the incorrect one immediately becomes worthless.
That pricing model might sound familiar to some readers, who may recall the binary options market, that sprung up 15 years ago in London, and which became popular among margin trading brokers and their clients.
However, the binary options market was quickly overtaken by scammers and fraudsters, to the extent that European and U.K. regulators, issued an outright ban on the products, for retail investors, in late March 2018.
What types of indicators are available IBKR ForecastTrader?
IBKR ForecastTrader offers contracts on political, economic, and climate indicators such as the Democratic U.S. Presidential candidate in the next U.S. Presidential election cycle, Federal Reserve’s target interest rate, U.S. consumer sentiment, national debt, retail sales, and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Specific live contracts include:
- U.S. House of Representatives Control
- Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions
- Global Temperature
- U.S. Total Electricity Generation
- Ethereum Price
- Solana Price
- S&P 500 Futures Price
- US Consumer Price Index Yearly
- Forecast contracts on U.S. elections are only available to eligible U.S. residents.
Interactive Brokers’ existing U.S. customers can access Forecast Contracts through the IBKR ForecastTrader platform using their current credentials.
The ForecastEX exchange is also open to clients of other U.S. futures commission merchants, or brokers, and trades on the exchange will be processed and settled by a dedicated clearing house.
Interactive Brokers doesn’t charge commission fees on forecast contracts as the exchange executes trades only when the “Yes” and “No” add up to $1.01, with both sides of the trade paying a portion of the penny fee.
What makes ForecastEx different from other forecast contract trading sites?
Thomas Peterffy, the Founder and Chairman of Interactive Brokers, believes forecast contracts will be highly impactful in shaping society’s response to crucial questions, and establishing a consensus on controversial issues.
Can forecast contracts be used for hedging purposes?
Interactive Brokers believes that forecast contracts are useful hedges against political, economic, and weather-related forecasts.
However, forecast contracts/outcome markets are not new.
But, interest in them has been revived and has grown rapidly since the pandemic.
According to The Wall Street Journal, more forecast contracts were listed for trading in 2021 than in the previous 15 years combined.
How does ForecastEx compare to other similar offerings?
ForecastEx is unusual in being a dedicated and regulated exchange for forecast contracts,
The ability to speculate on political and economic forecasts is no bad thing in itself.
However, the outcome in the widest sense very much depends on the business model adopted and its application.
Binary options were an interesting product, but they were open to abuse. And even without that abuse, it would have been hard for even legitimate margin trading firms, to justify their existence and win-loss ratios to the regulator, from a treating customers fairly perspective, whilst the broker was taking the other side of every client trade.
Interactive Brokers’ approach is somewhat different because they have established a regulated exchange to facilitate trades in forecast markets.
The underlying levels of demand for these contracts remain an unknown quantity, are they a novelty? Or something retail traders will get behind?
Best Forecast Contracts Platforms Compared & Reviewed
Best Forecast Contracts Platforms Compared & Reviewed – Good Money Guide
Forecast contracts are platforms where participants buy and sell contracts based on the outcome of future forecasts. These forecasts can be political, economic, sporting or anything that can be framed as a clear yes or no question. Prices move according to supply and demand, which means the market reflects the collective view of all participants about how likely a forecast is to occur.
We’ve ranked and reviewed the best forecast contract trading platforms for forecast contracts, highlighting what each platform does best.
What are forecast contracts?
In effect, forecast contracts turn opinions into tradable instruments. If a contract is trading at 70, the market is implying a 70 percent chance that the forecast will happen. If the outcome is confirmed, the contract settles at 100. If it does not, it settles at zero.
Forecast contracts are often used to gauge sentiment because they combine information from a wide range of participants and update continuously as expectations change.
What are the most popular forecast contracts?
The best-known forecast contracts are global retail platforms that allow participants to trade opinions about politics, policy decisions and macro forecasts. Popular examples include markets on election winners, central bank decisions, inflation outcomes, interest rate cuts or hikes, and sporting or entertainment results.
Institutional versions also exist. Exchanges such as CME have explored forecast-style contracts in the past, and a number of academic and research bodies build internal forecast contracts to predict business outcomes, sales numbers or product success.
Which is an example of a forecast contract?
A widely cited example is PredictIt in the United States. Traders could buy or sell shares in outcomes such as who would win an election or whether a piece of legislation would pass. Each share costbetween 1 cent and 99 cents and settled at 1 dollar if the forecast occurred.
Another example is Kalshi, which operates regulated forecast contracts on subjects such as interest rate decisions, inflation releases or weather metrics. Although these are structured as forecast futures, they behave similarly to forecast contracts, with prices reflecting the probability of an outcome.
Many decentralised crypto platforms also run forecast contracts where settlements occur on-chain, although liquidity and regulatory certainty differ from traditional financial exchanges.
Are forecast contracts the same as gambling?
Not exactly, but the distinction depends heavily on regulation and jurisdiction.
Forecast contracts are designed to aggregate information and express probabilities, while gambling is primarily entertainment with no market pricing mechanism. However, when forecast contracts cover highly sensitive subjects such as elections, regulators often view them as too close to betting.
Some authorities classify political forecast contracts as gambling. Others permit them under strict conditions if they are used for research, education or hedging economic outcomes. This blurred line is one of the main challenges facing the industry.
Who regulates forecast contracts?
In the United States, forecast contracts that function like financial contracts fall under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The regulator has approved certain forecast-based markets and rejected others, particularly those involving political outcomes.
Elsewhere, regulation varies. Some countries do not permit real-money forecast contracts at all. Others classify them under gaming rules rather than derivatives regulation. Crypto-based markets often fall outside traditional frameworks entirely, which increases risk.
Because oversight is inconsistent, traders need to check whether a platform is licensed, supervised or operating under a no-action letter.
Forecast contracts versus futures and options
Forecast contracts resemble derivatives but operate more simply. A futures or options contract has complex pricing, margin requirements, time decay and exposure to underlying assets. Forecast contracts strip all that back to a single binary question: will this happen or not.
Key differences include:
Futures and options allow hedging real market positions. Forecast contracts are usually speculative.
Derivatives have well defined valuation models. Forecast contract pricing is driven entirely by trader sentiment.
Futures and options are standardised financial instruments. Forecast contracts are often bespoke and can include non-financial subjects such as elections or policy decisions.
Derivatives are tightly regulated globally. Forecast contract regulation is inconsistent and often contested.
Despite the simplicity, forecast contracts behave similarly to binary options, where the final settlement is 100 if the forecast occurs and zero if it does not.
Pros and cons of forecast contracts
Pros
- Simple to understand. Traders only need to decide whether a forecast will happen, and prices directly reflect probabilities.
- Low barriers to entry. Contract sizes are small and do not require margin, which makes the format accessible.
- Continuous sentiment gauge. Markets show real time collective expectations ahead of major forecasts.
- Useful for hedging uncertainty. Some institutional markets allow participants to hedge economic or policy outcomes.
Cons
- Risk of total loss. If the forecast does not occur, contracts typically expire worthless.
- Regulatory uncertainty. Many political or socially sensitive markets face restrictions or shutdowns.
- Information quality varies. Prices can be distorted by low liquidity or herd behaviour, reducing their reliability.
- Potential overlap with gambling laws. Some jurisdictions classify forecast contracts as gaming, which limits access and protections.
Richard is the founder of the Good Money Guide (formerly Good Broker Guide), one of the original investment comparison sites established in 2015. With a career spanning two decades as a broker, he brings extensive expertise and knowledge to the financial landscape.
Having worked as a broker at Investors Intelligence and a multi-asset derivatives broker at MF Global (Man Financial), Richard has acquired substantial experience in the industry. His career began as a private client stockbroker at Walker Crips and Phillip Securities (now King and Shaxson), following internships on the NYMEX oil trading floor in New York and London IPE in 2001 and 2000.
Richard’s contributions and expertise have been recognized by respected publications such as The Sunday Times, BusinessInsider, Yahoo Finance, BusinessNews.org.uk, Master Investor, Wealth Briefing, iNews, and The FT, among many others.
Under Richard’s leadership, the Good Money Guide has evolved into a valuable destination for comprehensive information and expert guidance, specialising in trading, investment, and currency exchange. His commitment to delivering high-quality insights has solidified the Good Money Guide’s standing as a well-respected resource for both customers and industry colleagues.
