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It might be a good idea if it's a company with very low average trading volume, a large amount of employee stock relative to that trading volume, and a reason why the employees would all be trading in one direction. If you're talking about any big names though I would have to think it would be...

Ha! I was going to say "so William Gibson" but didn't think anyone would get it!

That is strange behavior on IBs or any broker's side for a Reg T account. It really does sound like they mistakenly put a chunk of their PM code in the Reg T codebase.

So you're saying that the amount of margin needed for product X is variable based on how margined your account is? So you need 50% margin for ticker X, but if you have another position that uses some of your margin they single you out and you require 100% or 120% margin for that same ticker X...

I'll take your word on that, not tuned in enough to the UK's current situation especially with the Brexit impacts to support my side of an intelligent conversation on it.

This thread is starting to remind me of my top 10 best conversations with IB "customer service" 1. Display a stunning lack of understanding of basic financial products. 2. Misunderstand the underlying issue is a way that is almost certainly willful except for 1 above. 3. Condescendingly act as...

Don't conflate me with caveman, please. I worked for the government for 20 years, of course I understand the need for taxation! The rough "sides" on this are do you relatively lower taxes on the rich which will grow the economy more than the loss of revenue, leading to net increase in tax...

How could it be if the discussion is about margin requirements!

I agree with sss12 that this is pretty standard liberal orthadoxy for at least the whole time I've been following politics and had learned enough about the various economic theories to think intelligently about them (25 years more or less). In the U.S. at least.

Listen, you need to be able to string at least two coherent sentences together before anyone can begin to have a conversation with you. To address what I think you may be trying to convey: As of now you know nothing of my thoughts on economic theory, only that I believe one shouldn't...

No, you actually demonstrated that you didn't know anything about what you were pontificating on, and now you've demonstrated that you are not only ignorant but willfully so and unwilling to actually learn about that which you criticize. I'd be happy to be enlightened about why anything I said...

Turns out it's pretty hard to "run the government efficient", you've obviously never worked in government? It's not a business, it's nothing like a business, and in fact the federal government is mainly tasked with running only those functions that can't be efficiently outsourced to the private...

How are they being "gamed" exactly? How can you or they lose more than the purchase price of a long stop or option or the max defined loss on a european options spread? That's the topic of this thread, not if IB can or should increase allowed leverage.

I agree. Pretty poor display of sheer laziness imho as someone who has coded similar stuff, but that's their model.

Why would they give a flying fuck if their clients went long volatility products putting up margin equal to the most it is physically possible to lose? Is it some kind of morality play.

Let's be clear here. One poster is talking about buying an option. You can never, never lose more than you paid for an option. That's a fundamental attribute of an option! Same thing with a vertical spread with european options which is the other subject under discussion. The max loss is...

That worked, thanks. My kind of article, I actually hadn't read about the Finch experiment before so learned something new!

Unfortunately only if you're an FT subscriber. Do you mind posting the first paragraph, I think that's allowed under fair use?

They get audited multiple times a year!

Daniel Kahneman won his Nobel prize for his behavioral economics work with Amos Tversky defining Prospect Theory, which generally shows that humans in practice are risk seeking in losses and risk averse in gains. It essentially means that it's basic human nature to double down on losses but not...