Recent content by garywlynn

My contact at IB indicated it was a regulatory issue, so perhaps they are not allowed to put their IRA customers in a position where they can lose more money than they have. I'm guessing that is the reason why short-selling is not allowed in an IRA account. Gary

Agreed. The reasons I found the article interesting and I thought others might as well were, 1) IB is sitting on losses of $120M, mostly due to futures and not FX, 2) there was 100-to-1 leverage available with the EUR/CHF contract, and 3) IB is trying to recover those losses from the account...

This is old news, but relevant to the conversation: http://forexmagnates.com/75-interactivebrokers-franc-losses-fx-futures-spot-fx/ Interesting that the margin was only 1% for EUR/CHF. So it seems that if you lose more than your account value with a regular account, IB can go after the...

I happen to have an acquaintance with a top executive at IB and I emailed him on this situation. He just emailed me the following reply: "I heard about this notice mishap and i am sorry about it. It was an error. Hopefully we will not make that kind if error again. Yes, we had to discontinue...

I just read a post on another site (Collective2.com) that I think will be of interest to some of you: "I heard the following from IB today (via chat): As long as you have an open futures position in your IRA account, new positions will be allowed. However, when all futures positions in your IRA...

I also have two IRA accounts (a regular IRA and and SEP) and I've been able to trade futures without interruption -- I just traded the Yen 3 hours ago. From what I've been reading and what I was told by IB support, it is just a matter of time before they turn off the switch. It's a mystery to me...