1. Your margin will change every day. It will depend on many parameters.
2. The margin will be reduced because IB likes to stimulate your trading and it not contradicts to laws and regulations.
3. IB calculates the margin in real time. It does not change during the day though.
4. Liquidity is...
Quote from http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/marketData.php?ib_entity=llc
Customers will receive an allocation of 100 real-time concurrent market data lines in the first month of trading at IB. After the first month, customers will receive a market data line for the current...
Same ES options require 2813 initial and 2250 maintenance. Make it twice bigger to compare because of difference in multipliers (100 for SPX vs. 50 for ES). I am daring to say that SPAN will give you better margins with any spread. BTW, you will have margins reduced in half between 8:30 and...
Sorry, SPAN cannot be used for US index and stock options by any broker. GLOBEX and eCBOT support it. You need to work with futures options to get SPAN margins.
The information is located in place that is very easy to find:
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/cgi-pub/exchange_display_web.pl?einfo=usCME2&file=GLOBEX.html
From main menu it is TRADING/Exchanges/North America/CME(GLOBEX).
S&P and Dow futures options are picking up in popularity and...
All American equity options are standardized, clear in one place. Their availability not depends from brokerage. Market dictates. You personally can make any option avalable doing an offer.
ECBOT full and mini gold (ZG, YG) and silver (ZI, YI)
NYMEX gas (QG) and oil (QM)
GLOBEX live cattle (LE) and feeder cattle (GF)
IPE Crude (COIL). Gas Oil (GOIL), Natural Gas (NGF)
Currency futures are not a problem on IRA. Customer should liquidate these contracts before expiration though to avoid a currency delivery or we will do it automatically.
Unfortunately, I do not know exact time but software part is ready. The part the keeps us off is outside of my knowledge. The problem with GLOBEX/ECBOT options is trading hours on the exchange. We will not offer these options before their trading hours will cross pit trading hours.
The simplest way is to download TWS and login as edemo/demouser. You can also go to http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/demo.php
Put currency name in the left column and chose "cash" from the menu.