This week I was lucky enough to be invited onto the Tu Foro de Bolsa podcast, where Paco Pepe and Paco hit me with a barrage of questions that many users of the platform ask but don’t always find a clear answer to. Version 13, fees, custody, leverage, multi-currency, smart routing… Here’s the full summary of everything we discussed.
ProRealTime V13: the star new feature is US options
The most anticipated question: what does V13 bring compared to V12? The direct answer is that after more than 20 years developing the platform, we’ve finally added options on US stocks. In Spain it’s not something that’s traded much, but in Germany, the Nordic countries and above all in the United States it’s an absolutely key instrument.
The complexity of adding them is not trivial: the OPRA market (where these options trade) is the largest data market in the world. That’s why we needed a solid platform base — V12 gave us that, and it’s what enabled the leap to V13 with all the risk analysis, complex strategies and dedicated tools for options trading.
- Options on US stocks with the OPRA market in real time
- Risk analysis and complex strategies integrated into the options chain
- A modernized, more user-friendly interface
- V13 is already available in beta for software accounts; for real accounts it’s expected before the end of the year
If you want to see all the new features in detail, there’s the full rundown in the article on the new features of ProRealTime V13.
ProRealTime Web vs ProRealTime Complete
Another recurring question: what’s the difference between the web version and the complete version? The web version requires no installation, runs from the browser with a username and password, and is completely free. It includes real time on European and US stocks (CBOE market), and lets you trade with both Interactive Brokers and Saxobank.
The complete version, which forum members get for €10 a month (instead of the usual €36), includes almost 28 years of development: all the professional tools, advanced indicators, ProScreener, Volume Profile, options, futures and all the new V13 features.
Those credits can also be used to add real-time markets (they usually cost €6 per market). If you have them accumulated, you pay nothing for them.
Custody: zero euros
At a traditional bank, custody can be expensive. The reality is that these days stocks are no longer physical pieces of paper you have to keep, so charging to “custody” something that isn’t custodied is an anachronism. Modern brokers like Interactive Brokers or Saxobank charge absolutely nothing for custody.
Why does it take so long to open an account?
This is the “tough question” they asked me, but it has a very clear answer: regulation. Both Interactive Brokers and Saxobank, and ProRealTime itself (regulated by the French AMF, equivalent to Spain’s CNMV), are required to comply with KYC (Know Your Client).
This involves a series of criteria to verify that the investor has the minimum knowledge and the appropriate assets to trade. That’s why, instead of taking 10 minutes like at some neobank, at ProRealTime it can take 20-25 minutes. It’s the difference between being seriously regulated and not being regulated.
Transfers: watch out for the new European regulation
A new European regulation has just come out affecting all banks: when you make a transfer, the beneficiary has to be entered exactly with their full registered name, not with abbreviations. If until now you had “IB” as the beneficiary, you’ll have to change it to “Interactive Brokers Ireland LTD” with the corresponding entity.
Deposit guarantee: €20,000 + €100,000
ProRealTime doesn’t custody the funds — the ones who do are Interactive Brokers or Saxobank. There’s an important difference here:
- Interactive Brokers — being a broker, Europe requires a minimum liquidity guarantee of €20,000
- Saxobank — being a bank, it’s required to guarantee €100,000
If you have an account with both through ProRealTime, in total €120,000 of liquidity is guaranteed. Important: shares are registered, so this only affects uninvested liquidity.
In addition, Interactive Brokers spreads all its clients’ liquidity across dozens of banks around the world every night (fund segregation), precisely to avoid the bankruptcy risk of any single bank.
Leverage: margin account vs cash account
Leverage at Interactive Brokers isn’t like at other brokers that give you a fixed “x20” or “x40”. Here there’s an algorithm continuously calculating your portfolio’s risk. Broadly speaking:
- Intraday trade on liquid US stocks — IBKR can let you go up to x3 or x4 of your capital
- Trade left open more than a day — maximum x2
- IBKR doesn’t take into account where you have the stop loss — it only looks at the invested money and the leveraged money
By default, accounts at ProRealTime are opened as margin (with leverage), unless the client doesn’t pass the KYC criteria. At Saxobank, on the other hand, stock accounts are always cash type, without leverage. That makes it ideal for anyone who doesn’t want leverage and wants to trade Spanish stocks at a good price.
Fixed income: bonds directly at Interactive Brokers
Bonds aren’t bought from ProRealTime, but from the Interactive Brokers account management interface. There you can buy T-Bills, US corporate debt (Apple, Coca-Cola, Santander…) and many other types of fixed income. The minimum amount is usually €1,000, not 200, so keep that in mind.
Smart Routing: the hidden gem
For me, one of the most important features Interactive Brokers (and Saxobank) has and that almost no one appreciates. A stock doesn’t trade on just one marketplace — Banco Santander, for example, trades on the Madrid Stock Exchange, on CBOE, on EuroStoxx and on other smaller venues.
Smart Routing automatically looks for the best price for the client, no matter where you place the order. The broker doesn’t keep the difference — it passes it on to the client. It’s exactly the opposite of what many neobanks with “zero commissions” do, actually taking their fee in the spread, which is usually far more expensive than any explicit commission.
Practical differences between Interactive Brokers and Saxobank
Both are very good and very powerful brokers, but their client profile is different:
- Saxobank — more interesting for anyone trading Spanish stocks (cheaper than IBKR), cash account by default, €100,000 guarantee
- Interactive Brokers — far more competitive on US stocks, margin account by default, €20,000 guarantee, a wider variety of products
Fun fact: Interactive Brokers is already part of the S&P 500. And the average retail client volume at IBKR is €160,000 — people to whom the €20,000 liquidity guarantee matters relatively little.
Multi-currency: the trick no one explains
Here’s one of the most recurring questions I get. Interactive Brokers is a professional broker with multi-currency accounts. When, as a European, you send euros and trade in the US market without having converted to dollars, IBKR doesn’t do an automatic conversion for you — it lends you the dollars needed for that trade.
Additionally, a multi-currency account lets you speculate on currencies — some clients keep part of their capital in Swiss francs for stability, for example. And it never hurts to remember that in 2025 the euro-dollar moved 12-15%, so anyone who invested in the S&P 500 at the start of the year without hedging the exchange rate lost money even though the index rose 14%.
Short selling: when the broker won’t let you
Another very recurring question: why does it sometimes not let me go short? Going short means the broker lends you shares from another client so you can sell them and buy them back lower. If the stock isn’t liquid enough, there are no shares available in other clients’ accounts to lend — and the order is rejected.
Until you place the order you don’t really know whether there will be enough shares for you to short. Saxobank doesn’t allow shorts directly, but it does through CFDs. Interactive Brokers allows shorts on roughly 90% of stocks (the most liquid ones).
Conclusion
It was a pleasure to drop by Tu Foro de Bolsa and be able to answer live so many real questions that regularly reach me. If you work with ProRealTime connected to Interactive Brokers or Saxobank, I hope this summary helps you get much more out of the platform — from version 13 to the day-to-day operational details like currency, smart routing or leverage. To watch the full podcast, the video is above.
