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Well, here are a few places where it matters: - You can get an extra penny or two per contract if the broker routes to an exchange that offers price improvement, like BOX. I traded thousands of SPY contracts at Schwab and never once got price improvement, because they didn't route to BOX...

Every broker I've used except for E*Trade sent the ACH funds same day (i.e. the money was credited to my bank account the morning of the business day after it was deducted from my brokerage account). E*Trade always holds onto the money for one extra business day before sending it to the other...

No. In fact, if you do this, the deduction for the loss is permanently disallowed. http://www.fairmark.com/capgain/wash/wsira.htm

It's improbable they'd kick out a customer that redeemed valid certificates months ago. If the letter didn't say why, visit one of their offices and ask.

Long equity calls or puts that aren't offset by some other position are unmarginable, at any broker. Whether it's stated as "no margin requirement, but 100% of the cost is taken out of cash" or "margin is 100% of the cost of the option", the effect on your available margin is about the same.

You can get that kind of delta by trading a near-the-money SPY option.

Aren't almost all large and medium-cap NYSE-listed stocks halted during earnings releases?

If there are options where you're going to cancel a lot as you try to get a good price (such as a company that's received a buyout offer and the options now have a bid-ask spread of $1.50), you may be better off for those options using someone like Ameritrade or Schwab where you'll pay an extra...

IB charges an approximation of the fees they pay to the exchanges. In their words, For instance, AMEX charges $1 per options order cancelled in excess of the number of orders executed for a given month http://www.amex.com/amextrader/membership/fees/fees_Options.pdf . IB charges for any options...

Other things to consider: - will they charge you extra for a short after you've already made the transaction - how frequently do they do forced buy-ins

There's always a 3-day settlement period for stocks. Reg T says that if you have a cash account, you can only trade with settled funds. If your broker doesn't enforce this, they will get fined. http://www.finra.org/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2004/p002846 If, instead, you have a margin...

The VIX is barely over 50. People are not concerned yet. Wait until it gets over 80, then we'll see a (local) bottom. But I sort of agree - the market likely won't go down more than 200 or 300 more points... this week.

A long Calendar Spread is a special case of a call or put spread, whose margin requirements are described in the web page link that dagnyt posted.

I don't know what the prices were on Friday, but now a June 40 P is .36x.40 and a June 45 P is .62x.65. Assuming you can get a fill in the middle, you'll net .13. If you're paying $1 a contract in commission, you'll net .11.

Unless there's some new policy, or a fee for busting, they should have refunded the commission, too.

Why would you think they'd be delisted? They're above $1 and have large market caps.

First, look at the financial stocks yesterday that had options worth 5 cents at 1PM but then went up huge later in the day. To me, it's worth it to cover a short out-of-the-money option for 5 cents instead of waiting for it to expire worthless. Here's a horror story about someone who thought...

This may be tangential to the actual question, but can you actually trade SKF combos at the price the OP's paper trading system gave? The bid-ask spreads seem to be at least $1, possibly leading $4 or more slippage on a two-legged combo round trip.

I've occasionally been able to dispose of some long out of the money options for a penny or two each on expiration Friday, but more often than not there won't be any buyers. Also, yesterday WFC $10 calls were trading for as low as 5 cents, but then they rallied to as high as $1.40. Here's a...

I haven't talked to brokers about it, but just thinking about it logically: if you hold 100 shares of one stock that's trading at $45, and you write a covered $30 call on it for, say, $17, your equity has not really increased by $1700. It's arguably increased by $200, and even that can...