Platform review
Interactive Brokers ForecastTrader review
Forecast contracts listed on ForecastEx, a CFTC-designated contract market
Our verdict
The best-documented resolution process of any venue we cover, offered by the firm that owns the exchange doing the resolving. ForecastEx publishes a 75-page rulebook and a contract specification for every instrument — we checked all of roughly 11,470 live contracts and found no missing specification — and, far more unusually, it publishes what happens when settlement goes wrong. Its notices to members run to 439 entries and include eight occasions where the exchange replaced or overrode its own data source, including binary contracts settled non-binary at 50/50. That is a real, dated, readable history of contested resolutions, and almost nobody else supplies one. The counterweight is structural: ForecastEx is, in its own rulebook, “a wholly owned subsidiary of IBG LLC”, so the broker owns the venue that decides; determinations are “final and not subject to review”; and the exchange’s own committee rules on whether a dispute may even go to arbitration. Note too that the customer-facing FAQ presents settlement as strictly binary and never mentions the Event Review process at all. Best suited to economic and rate contracts and to traders who will read a rulebook. Not a sports venue.
Verified documents & product scope
Check country eligibility
Choose the country you want to check. This lookup does not change your site region or establish individual account approval.
Eligibility
Eligibility depends on the IBKR entity carrying the account, account permissions and the contract. Exchange availability is not a country-wide guarantee of broker access.
These are document checks, not a funded-account test. Access may depend on residence, physical location, account approval and the contract category. Check the operator’s current terms before depositing.
- IBKR Forecast Markets disclosures — checked
Access is offered to eligible clients of named IBKR entities. An entity list does not establish eligibility for every resident of the corresponding country.
- ForecastEx FAQ — checked
ForecastEx documentation describes the exchange. Broker account terms and charges need to be checked separately.
Pros and cons
What works
- A published specification for every contract — we checked roughly 11,470 live instruments and found none missing
- The only venue we cover with a real, dated, public record of contested settlements: 439 notices including eight data overrides
- A separate disciplinary log, which includes a filing against Interactive Brokers itself
- Interest paid on open position value, which no other venue here offers
- Contract terms settle the revision question explicitly rather than leaving it to be argued
What doesn’t
- The exchange is a wholly owned subsidiary of the broker’s parent, so the broker owns the venue that decides
- Determinations are “final and not subject to review”
- The exchange’s own committee decides whether a dispute may go to arbitration, and that decision is final too
- Binary contracts have been settled non-binary at 50/50, which the customer-facing FAQ does not prepare anyone for
- Rule 415 assigns a data-error decision to a body the rulebook never defines
- Economic and political contracts only — not a sports venue
Prices and liquidity
We do not currently publish live quotes for Interactive Brokers ForecastTrader. Check the platform’s order book before placing an order: the last trade can differ from the price available for your position size.
How to assess liquidity and spreads →How ForecastTrader works
IBKR ForecastTrader is Interactive Brokers’ front end for forecast contracts listed on ForecastEx, a CFTC-designated contract market. The contracts are yes/no claims on economic releases, rates, climate and political events, settling at $1, and IBKR pays interest on the position value while it is open — which is a genuine structural difference from every other venue here.
The ownership is the thing to understand first, and it is stated in both parties’ own documents. ForecastEx Rule 201: “ForecastEx LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of IBG LLC.” Interactive Brokers’ FY2025 annual report on Form 10-K describes ForecastTrader as its platform for trading contracts from ForecastEx, “a registered exchange with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission … and our wholly-owned subsidiary”.
So the broker owns the exchange that determines the outcome. That is disclosed rather than hidden, and it is legal, and it is still a concentration of roles that no other venue on this site has.
Disclosure that is actually complete
Rule 311(d) commits the exchange to posting a specification for every listed contract, and unusually the commitment holds up when tested. We requested the full instrument list without an account on 9 September 2026: roughly 11,470 live contracts came back, and every single row carried a populated specification URL, with none missing.
The specifications are specific where it counts. The CPI contract names its source agency and states that “ForecastEx will only consider the initial CPI value from the official release”, which settles the revision question before it can be argued about. Every specification carries a delay clause: if the source agency delays the data, resolution is delayed until it is released.
One disclosure gap is worth naming. Rule 507(a) obliges brokers to hand customers the risk disclosure statement and the rulebook — not the per-contract terms. And IBKR’s own retail FAQ presents settlement as strictly binary and never mentions the Event Review process at all, which matters given the next section.
A published history of contested settlements — the only one we found
The criterion most venues make unanswerable is the history of disputed resolutions. ForecastEx answers it. Its notices to members run to 439 entries, of which 83 concern resolution or settlement delays — 40 of those citing the US government shutdown — and eight document the exchange replacing or overriding its own data source.
The notices are specific. One reads: “The Event Review Committee has determined that the correct resolution value for the ULBNA_072226 Contracts is 73.” Another invokes Rule 414 accelerated settlement when no October unemployment rate would be published, resolving the contracts “to the most recent last prices”. In practice that meant binary contracts settling non-binary — the Louisiana primaries closed at $0.50/$0.50 and $0.38/$0.62, which is not an outcome the retail FAQ prepares anyone for.
The process was also applied unevenly. Three temperature markets received an explicit “Event Review Process Initiated” notice; the Louisiana contracts received only a delay notice before being settled at fair value. A separate disciplinary log carries nine filings, one of them against Interactive Brokers LLC itself for executing a transfer without prior approval, fined $1,250.
Where the process stops
Determinations are closed to challenge in the rulebook’s own words: the Event Review Committee “has full discretion in resolving the Event Review Process” and its determinations “are final”, with a parallel rule adding “final and not subject to review”.
Arbitration exists under Rule 801(a) and runs under NFA rules, and customers are inside the definition of market participant. But Rule 801(d) lets the exchange’s own Regulatory Oversight Committee decide whether a matter is even appropriate for arbitration, and that decision is also final. The exchange therefore controls the gate to the forum that would review it.
There is also a drafting defect worth knowing about if you ever need to follow the rules through. Rule 415(c) assigns the first-line decision on a data error to a “Change Control Oversight Board” — a body the rulebook never defines, and which the exchange’s own website describes as the committee that approves access to its IT systems. The following subsection tests a different body entirely for the same condition.
User reviews
We have no approved reviews for Interactive Brokers ForecastTrader. Every submission is read by a moderator before it appears, and none has passed for this platform. The User Score is not published below 3 reviews, so nothing is averaged here either — the Editor Score above is measured against our own criteria and does not depend on it.
New review submissions are temporarily closed. For corrections, contact bestpredictionmarkets@proton.me.
Interactive Brokers ForecastTrader FAQ
- Does IBKR own the exchange its forecast contracts trade on?
- Yes, and both sides say so. ForecastEx Rule 201 states that “ForecastEx LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of IBG LLC”, and Interactive Brokers’ own Form 10-K describes ForecastEx as “a registered exchange with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission … and our wholly-owned subsidiary”. It is disclosed rather than hidden and it is lawful, but it concentrates the broker and the venue that determines outcomes in one group — a combination no other platform we cover has.
- Can a ForecastEx contract settle at something other than $0 or $1?
- Yes. When the source data is not published, Rule 414 permits accelerated settlement at the most recent last prices, and it has been used: the Louisiana primaries settled at $0.50/$0.50 and $0.38/$0.62. The exchange has also replaced or overridden its own data source on eight occasions we found in its notices to members. None of this appears in the customer-facing FAQ, which presents settlement as strictly binary.