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The problem with explanation of portfolio margin is complexity. Even if a person understands all the rules, application of these rules depends on a ton of numbers produced by the OCC and in house (IB) every day. One will have a huge problem to put it all together even if we publish everything...

Yes

We all were confused by zerohedge article. CME did not increase maintenance margin requirements but dropped initial. As always, IB requires initial margin equal to at least 125% of maintenance. IB customers will be minimally affected. For example, overnight initial margin for ES is now 1.25 *...

Sorry, no clue, I am not an accountant.

Tonkadad, It is not that simple because futures P&L and options values are part of the equation but generally speaking money should just cover maintenance margin. Money transfers are done pretty much instantaneously from the software point of view. I cannot tell you how it is handled legally in...

It is not matter of luck. Futures account normally keeps enough money to meet performance bond requirements. Everything else goes to the security side.

It is a free Internet. You should separate BS from real information yourself. IB is always fulfilling best execution obligations. We do not liquidate without enough reasons. It is not in our interests. Complaints from customers who exceeded reasonable risks and were liquidated are natural. If...

Yes, it is a demo system limitation. SBF stocks are available.

You can do it with Interactive Brokers.

sf631, Could you please provide an example or a few examples of inaccuracy of http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/ViewMarginStocks.php?cntry=usa&tag=United+States&ib_entity=llc&ln= ?

Nobody will give you offsets between short and long positions of different ETF. The only benefit you can get having diversified portfolio is avoiding of concentration in a few positions, which will imply additional margin charge. You can use paper account to check "what if" cases. There is...

The problem is portfolio margin account is, well, PORTFOLIO margin account. There is no notion of a margin for a separate position. You request could be fulfilled only for simple cases. Generally, it is impossible.

CME weekly FX options are released to customers.

We are not offering weekly FX options yet. Open interest does not matter.

Thank you. I was just curious. Remember, IB paid a billion dollars of dividends this quarter. It affected the earning picture a lot.

This is not a good answer. Provide a reference please to support your statement.

hoodooman, where did you find negative earnings in IB?

If you have a single stock position in IB portfolio margin account, the margin will be 30%. You should have a diversified portfolio of 7-8 stocks with about equal market value to get 15% margin. I recommend to go to http://interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=margin, pick "Portfolio Margin" and...

Customer equity is $20.6 billion according to http://www.interactivebrokers.com/download/2010-11-Monthly-Brokerage-Data.xls. CFTC numbers are misleading because they show only part of equity involved in futures trading. IB does everything possible to minimize it to protect customers (see another...

We reserve our rights to liquidate after hours but we do not do it under normal conditions.