Search results

After re-reading the IB communique, I got the impression that at any time you may login to your account and change your exchange subscription. So if you have an IRA or other account that you don't think or don't know if you'll be trading in a particular month, you could change your subscription...

I myself always wondered how IB could afford to provide streaming real time quotes and the insanely low commissions that they do to its retail customers without charging anything extra. For those with IRA's I can understand the concern about the new fee. But for anyone who is a regular trader...

It seems to me the problem pulling the trigger is the fear of loss. However, if you have a predefined stop loss for the trade (which one should always have for any trade), then you know in your head that the worst that can happen is you lose that amount. Knowing that ahead of time makes my...

As a moderator, I would like to thank my fellow members for doing their parts with helping keep the boards efficient and productive. By notifying me of offensive or inappropriate posts that I may miss, it makes my job a little easier and helps strengthen the community. Kudos to all.

Option expiration usually means added volatility that day (like we need any more of that right now). You will often see unusual price moves in stocks that day, as market makers and institutional option traders will manipulate stock prices close to strike prices where there is a lot of open...

In reality, the real estate market is already starting to crack, but could begin to accelerate as soon as this month. A catalyst for this (and decline in the stock market) is what's happening this month in Japan. Japan's banks are being forced this month by the government to mark to market on...

We could easily be Japan now. We weren't before, but many things have changed, and we have events that have never happened in history and have no basis of reference for the future. The reason Japan has stayed in a depression comes down to one end cause. No one there is spending, everyone is...

I'd be interested in knowing if IB's commissions will be affected at all by this, as their commission structure has been .01 per share, which has included any ECN fees and SEC sales proceeds. Def?

There's currently no extended hours trading on options, so if a stock moves big in after hours you can't really do anything about your option position. IB's best is excellent on options, as it automatically routes your order to the exchange with the best inside price at that moment. Most of...

I agree that it's a bit cumbersome for a daytrade, but if you're looking at a swing trade and can't watch your positions all the time, you might consider an options collar. In your example, you bought the stock at 21. To do a collar, first you sell a higher strike call, say at 25. Then you...

If you are going to hold a position through earnings, it's much better to be short than long, so you might be okay. Particularly in the current market environment where stocks don't have the strength to rally very hard and any gap ups are usually filled in and retraced, compounded with the...

I never, ever do it. You never know how the stock is going to react in the short term, and God forbid they have a terrible outlook or conference call and the stock you're long gaps down 10 points. It's just as easy to get out of the position right before the earnings and get back in if the...

I'm going to suggest we move away from this topic, first because it is getting off the subject of trading, and second because it is pointless to hypothesize potential apocalyptic scenarios. Thank you.

As a wise man once said, "Being right too early is the same thing as being wrong". Think of all the people during the dot com bubble who knew that companies like YHOO and AMZN were way overvalued at $100 a share and shorted them only to get wiped out as the stocks continued to climb to $300 a...

Not really. IB is SIPC insured, which means that your account is safe up to $500,000 if IB went out of business.

cclee, My swing trade strategies depend on whether the current market environment is a trending market or a rangebound market. If the market is trending (for example the overall markets have been in a downtrend for the past several months), I will use basic chart reading TA to determine the...

You can always try to split the spread, although #1 there will be no guarantee that you will be filled, especially since options are considerably less liquid. #2 is that there are new rules imposed on option trading that restrict you from splitting the spread more than once within a certain...

I've found it tiresome in general to try to pick individual stocks in this environment (aside from playing some gap openings on specific issues). My opinion and what I'll be doing is buying SPX calls, and if certain sectors are looking good I'll buy calls on sectors like XAU, OSX, SOX, UTY...

One general key that has allowed me to consistently profit is to distinguish between trading during a bull market and a bear market. Having traded in both and witnessed a lot of intersting things, here are a couple of observations: In a bull market --Supports tend to hold better and...

The arbitrage meter will show up when you call up an index, such as NDX, DJX, MNX, etc. It is not necessary to have a futures account. If you type in for instance NDX, and in the pop up menu select Index, it will come up and the arbitrage window will be available for that index.