Search results

Maintaining your current high intraday margins is indefensible. And I doubt you'll ever lower them, quite frankly.

I agree there are many styles. Personally, I suggest you become a specialist in a very few items you trade for a living, and do not "scan markets", nor "chase" movers. Being a specialist is one of the keys to success. Not all that glitters turns out to be gold. My own work, in part, is in...

Well, my only observation is that single contract trading is a very weak method. At least allow yourself to use 2 contracts, and "stagger" or "scale" them into the market. Don't shoot both contracts at the same price. Stagger them in in two single shots, spaced maybe 4 tics apart...

IB is protecting itself from your potentially irresponsible behavior; now don't you feel guilty? :) FS Get the message? IB doesn't want daytraders, unless they are heavily capitalized. It's gonna lose them my business in the long run.

If you number Market Depth tiers from 0 (inside) outwards as 1,2,3,4... Persistent price trend is usually driven by ratios of cumulative volumes from tiers 2,3,4 outside both the bid and ask. A ratio of askv / (bidv + askv) is highly correlated with dominant trend. If greater than 0.5, it is a...

The real reason that price follows aggregate book volume is that Market Makers place volume on the side of the book before they move price in that direction. It is a direct consequence of the fact that they "crowd" the book price levels so that they can "make the spread", so that we (in...

Buzz, you are correct. How did you know that ? :) FS

The reason I trade with IB is the high performance API to TWS. It may require high tech programming skills to use, but when it works it's the best and lowest cost of any "discount" direct access broker. It's just their intraday margin consts which are temporarily (I hope) a big issue in...

It's time the "voices of reason" spoke up against this IB margin scam. In truth, they want to discourage daytraders; that's their likely agenda. There is no other reason for intraday margin to be doubled, in most cases, and for that to "spill over" into non-equities related futures as well...

I got a client query about using IB's TWS and medium-speed daytrading front-end on a Satellite link. Having no experience with Sat myself, are there ever issues where TWS simply won't wait long enough for a heartbeat, or whatever, and seizes? Or does it work reliably, normally, but simply...

I can't help but be sympathetic, because many of us have been where you are at one time in our careers. I suggest you pause trading, and mend the issues with your spouse and family. That's more important. Trading is one of those things where the slightest element which is not "in balance"...

It's not just the size on the book, but you want to see a trade at the ASK which is substantial, *corresponding* roughly to that advertised size. In other words, the MM (or big seller) actually sold at that price (rather than backing away, which would have been a "spoof"). In that case, if...

Well, there's lots of ways to trade. In my case, it's frequent daytrading or scalping of futures contracts. If I did not have the Market Depth analysis, I couldn't make it because, most of the time, ONLY the Book Analysis tells me the most about which way the market is headed, in...

I was talking about a retail buyer never showing up on the ASK because he buys the ask from someone selling at the inside ASK, and these are "market makers" who are sitting there offering to sell. Yes, of course. If the trader puts a limit to sell at the inside ASK, it will show up as the...

No, the Market Depth is very important in ES. Size on the inside and mid-distance bid or ask clues you into where MM's will be moving price. If on the ask side, then up; bid side, then down. The reason for this is that size is placed on the book at price tiers where price will be moving, so...

OldTrader, Of course I think you've spoken wisely, and all we ( I ) am asking of IB is to be "reasonable" in their intraday margin hikes, and to restore the "status quo ante" (or something near to it) ASAP !!!!! :) FS

My god, I just realized he may be right !!! I didn't realize how much "at risk" Interactive Brokers and similar companies have been ALL THESE YEARS. :) How did they make any money? My eyes have been opened. FS

By far, the most important thing for daytraders or scalpers to understand is that they should consistently use "position scaling" to manage positions. Whether right or wrong, many times just the fact that you are using intelligent scaling into and out of positions can often make you money or...

Huh? Isn't that giving IB more credit than it's poorly managed intraday margin nuking maneuver really merits? After all, don't you think $3500 INTRADAY margin is too much margin for ES, as you feel $300 margin is too little margin for ES (with which I would surely agree) ? :) FS

Thanks. I couldn't have stated it more clearly ! :) FS