i've been with IB for about 3 years but i can't stand many aspects of how they run their business and it is just laughable how so many people here like the sprstpd idiot here will defend IB at all costs its like its part of their religion.......double click my ass, i double click 1000x a day.......now watch IB jerk OP by only giving him like 12k back.........OP is an obvious clueless trader and will eventually blowout anyway if he is shorting 66 lots of GBP going into the biggest fed rate cut decision in 3 years with only 52k in capital and the idiot only covers AFTER he's lost it all..........but that doesn't mean IB shouldn't own up to its mistake by refunding his loss in total........TWS has all kinds of problems every single time they do a new release or update: data problems, chart problems, execution problems, etc......it the most unreliable platform out there coming from a broker with the highest profit margins in the entire industry.
$52k gone from my IB account. What next, sue IB?
- Thread starter zzzap
- Start date
yeah but after a month the op hardly had a response... IB is no different than any organization whether it's government, corporate, whatever, they don't respond until you get their attention. I would start the arbitration thing and then let IB decide whether they wanted to arbitrate or not... what if all your trading capital is tied up in the dispute and you have no income for the interim?
My last employer owed me some overtime pay. I told them a few times, they did nothing, I filled out the form to take them to the labor board and told them they had one day to respond or the original was off in the email..... within a day I had a check for more than they owed me.... it's SOP nowadays, stall, don't pay, then if pushed, pay up...
Quote from maxpi:
I knew a guy that hated lawyers. So he bought a business without consulting a lawyer and then found it had unfunded pension liability problems... he wound up living like a nomad, lost a house he built with his own hands, etc... remember, love is the answer to most everything
There are some situations where lawyers are needed and some situations where they aren't needed. For most things, I can get by without a lawyer just fine.
Yes, you are probably right. Many years ago I had an incident involving IB's TWS that cost me a fair amount of money. I complained but felt like no one was listening. I felt the matter was not being given the proper attention so I dropped a line like "going to contact the SEC" blah blah blah. The situation cleared up fairly quickly after that but I have no idea whether what I said had any bearing on how fast the problem was resolved.
By the way, why doesn't zzzap just respond to this question about playing around with the open position? I guess he may be insulted by this line of questioning and feels it isn't worth a reply. However, just saying that he didn't try to make coin off of the erroneous position and that he didn't notice it til after the news would mean something to me. Not that what I think matters.
Is not my religion. I've berated IB before and have started threads insinuating things against them where I've been wrong.
How am I defending IB here? They are paying at least part of the money back and I suspect will pay for all of it unless they have very strong evidence that zzzap knowingly played around with the position.
What I find laughable is how many people on these boards bring up idiotic insinuations about IB (myself included) without any proof and it is taken as gospel. I'd guess more than 90% of the time the original poster is wrong.
I didn't even want to reply to ridiculous comments that it's my fault that I doubleclicked. But hey, for the slower among us, here it is:
Who said I didn't want to doubleclick? It doesn't matter if I clicked 1, 2, or 3 times. The point is that TWS should either cancel the second transmit due to lack of margin or it should post it in TWS as a working orders. Neither of this happened. Instead, unwanted execution occurred more than 7 hours later out of nowhere.
It's interesting that no one is questioning whether IB knew about the bug and kept telling me the order came from my PC and they have nothing to do with it.
Here are the facts:
I'm not a programmer but I told IB the very first day when the incident happened tat according to the log, it seems that there is some IB software glitch. As is now apparent, this was indeed the case.
It is hard for me to believe that after almost 4 weeks IB representative working with their top programmers on the issue (as I was told) came to the conclusion that the order came from my PC and they have nothing to do with it. When I questioned their explanation, they simply ignored me.
Then I started this thread and after generating a lot of interest IBj notices this thread and comes to a conclusion that there was indeed a IB software error. Note, he came to this conclusion in literally few hours, problem that "top IB programmers" couldn't figure in almost 1 month.
I'm not accusing anyone from anything, everyone can form their own opinion about this.
Some accused me of playing the market and trying to profit from the unwanted position. Placing some orders around break/even of unwanted position (which I didn't even know if it is true position) could be hardly called playing the market. And believe me, "profit" was the least thing on my mind at that time.
It is easy for someone to point to a chart and show me where I could/should have closed the position. It's not that simple.
I can show a chart too. If the erroneous position is reversed, my 66 GBP contracts would show 300k profit right now.
The incident cost me much more than the $52k, including opportunity cost and lost profits. But if gave me something - lot of stress. I had a constant headache for a week, I'm not kidding.
It's not a coincidence that the day after the debacle, I had another low 5digits losing day due to the wrong mind set. (This is obviously my fault, I'm just stating it as interesting point.)
To put things in perspective here are few facts:
My biggest loss per trade/day/week/month for this year until the incident was 4 digits.
I have backups for everything. I have backup for my main trading PC, internet connections, multiple brokers, UPS. But I couldn't hedge against something similar what happened.
I don't have a position that big that often. And before I open any position I always have exit plan. When opening a big position, I even visualize different scenarios and how will I react.
I have nothing to hide. That's why I said IBj to post the explanation on the forum.
I stated in my opening post that "I came back home just before the US rate decision and found a opened position -66 GBP..."
It wasn't simple when I came home and when I look at my TWS Account information, seeing 5 digit loss. I was in shock, looking at the loss and then finding out my account shows -66 GBP contracts.
I was trying to figure out what is going on reading thru the logs and managing another orders on 4 other brokers at the same time just few minutes before the rate decision. It was crazy.
I had to make a decision what to do. Should I close the position? Was it even real? It may look simple with hindsight but believe me, it was crazy and all happened very quickly. First I wanted to keep the position and ask IB what to do with it, but then there came the surprise rate cut and I decided to close the position with a huge loss rather than letting my account to be wiped out. I called the customer service as soon as I was able to do so as I literally couldn't move staring at the loss. That's true, I'm not trying to be melodramatic.
Who said I didn't want to doubleclick? It doesn't matter if I clicked 1, 2, or 3 times. The point is that TWS should either cancel the second transmit due to lack of margin or it should post it in TWS as a working orders. Neither of this happened. Instead, unwanted execution occurred more than 7 hours later out of nowhere.
It's interesting that no one is questioning whether IB knew about the bug and kept telling me the order came from my PC and they have nothing to do with it.
Here are the facts:
I'm not a programmer but I told IB the very first day when the incident happened tat according to the log, it seems that there is some IB software glitch. As is now apparent, this was indeed the case.
It is hard for me to believe that after almost 4 weeks IB representative working with their top programmers on the issue (as I was told) came to the conclusion that the order came from my PC and they have nothing to do with it. When I questioned their explanation, they simply ignored me.
Then I started this thread and after generating a lot of interest IBj notices this thread and comes to a conclusion that there was indeed a IB software error. Note, he came to this conclusion in literally few hours, problem that "top IB programmers" couldn't figure in almost 1 month.
I'm not accusing anyone from anything, everyone can form their own opinion about this.
Some accused me of playing the market and trying to profit from the unwanted position. Placing some orders around break/even of unwanted position (which I didn't even know if it is true position) could be hardly called playing the market. And believe me, "profit" was the least thing on my mind at that time.
It is easy for someone to point to a chart and show me where I could/should have closed the position. It's not that simple.
I can show a chart too. If the erroneous position is reversed, my 66 GBP contracts would show 300k profit right now.
The incident cost me much more than the $52k, including opportunity cost and lost profits. But if gave me something - lot of stress. I had a constant headache for a week, I'm not kidding.
It's not a coincidence that the day after the debacle, I had another low 5digits losing day due to the wrong mind set. (This is obviously my fault, I'm just stating it as interesting point.)
To put things in perspective here are few facts:
My biggest loss per trade/day/week/month for this year until the incident was 4 digits.
I have backups for everything. I have backup for my main trading PC, internet connections, multiple brokers, UPS. But I couldn't hedge against something similar what happened.
I don't have a position that big that often. And before I open any position I always have exit plan. When opening a big position, I even visualize different scenarios and how will I react.
I have nothing to hide. That's why I said IBj to post the explanation on the forum.
I stated in my opening post that "I came back home just before the US rate decision and found a opened position -66 GBP..."
It wasn't simple when I came home and when I look at my TWS Account information, seeing 5 digit loss. I was in shock, looking at the loss and then finding out my account shows -66 GBP contracts.
I was trying to figure out what is going on reading thru the logs and managing another orders on 4 other brokers at the same time just few minutes before the rate decision. It was crazy.
I had to make a decision what to do. Should I close the position? Was it even real? It may look simple with hindsight but believe me, it was crazy and all happened very quickly. First I wanted to keep the position and ask IB what to do with it, but then there came the surprise rate cut and I decided to close the position with a huge loss rather than letting my account to be wiped out. I called the customer service as soon as I was able to do so as I literally couldn't move staring at the loss. That's true, I'm not trying to be melodramatic.
Well, whether you intended to "play with" the position or not, you effectively did let the position ride. Next time you should close out erroneous positions immediately and then deal with the aftermath, especially since you knew the news was coming out shortly.
Hopefully IB reimburses you for the full loss, but this issue is not just cut and dry. I can see both points of view. Hope it goes your way.
So you say - is that IB's official position as well?
I've had erroneous positions appear in my MBTrading account that were later corrected. If I had traded out of them I would have ended up with the opposite position when they finally removed the original erroneous entry.
If a position shows up in your account that you don't believe is correct I do not think it is wise to simply close it first and ask questions later. Doing so is just as risky as leaving the position intact.
I agree with GTS. Its really easy to be a smartass in hindsight. Its unreasonable to assume the client can find out in realtime what is going on and come to the right conclusion right away when the platform shows erratic behaviour. When there are "phantom orders", one could assume that there are "phantom positions" too, so he might end up with an opposite "real" position when closing it.
When it takes IB support and "toplevel programmers" 5 weeks and IBj a few hours to find out what went on, then you cant expect the OP to react in a few moments.
When it takes IB support and "toplevel programmers" 5 weeks and IBj a few hours to find out what went on, then you cant expect the OP to react in a few moments.