The OP’s question is valid because of the retarded way IB margins vertical spreads. Even though his max risk is $50 IB marks to the bid/ask on the spread.
The margin requirement for vertical spreads is totally nonsensical at IB. If I have a bull put spread on ES at Sell 10 Puts 2700 Buy 10 Put 2650 the most I can lose is 50 pts x 50 x 10 but IB calculates i initial margin at 72 x 50 x 10 and maintenance at 57 x 50 x 10. Retarded. I have yet to see...
IB has a fairly large PB service now.
Any legitimate fund or major trader in the energy space (eg Bone) uses webICE (or its replacement once it gets out of beta) so how does that work with a shop using IB as PB? Give up agreement and use another broker that has webice to execute and IB just...
How is living in Madrid, Spain useful at all for minimizing taxes on trading profit? Spain's taxman is almost as bad as France's and the Beckham Law doesn't cover cap gains.
Well... other than not being able to print my goddamn confirms out not much has changed.
Though I don't recall the bal day closing on Friday at 6 PM when it was swaps?
Sure, I wouldn't recommend it to someone not familiar with the market, but if Joe Schmoe wants to try his hand at power and hand over his money, so be it...
So for example for G/WH unless I'm watching it every second of every day, because it's so thinly traded I have no idea if there was even a bid or offer out at any point in the day.
Same for most other locational spread swaps.
Also if you want to put on a big position you may want to do it...
If they do this right, and make the power futures just like any other product on ICE Futures US, liquidity and volumes should increase drastically which should offset any loss ICE will have from the fees for using their proprietary trading platform (which is a POS).
You'll start to see many...