It helps IB because it encourages very risky clients to go else where.Except it doesn't do anything for their risk. Increasing margin does that. Even thousands and thousands of $.59 fees won't help them when a nuke in Saudi Arabia doubles the price of crude over the weekend, that's the kind of senseless "logic" you get out of IB all the time.
If you think the product is unduly risky in the event of a nuclear bomb in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, you simply don't offer it. Or you increase margin on it. Charging a $.59 fee to accomplish that goal is idiotic.It helps IB because it encourages very risky clients to go else where.
If you think the product is unduly risky in the event of a nuclear bomb in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, you simply don't offer it. Or you increase margin on it. Charging a $.59 fee to accomplish that goal is idiotic.
If you really think these products are risky and that IB realizes and is concerned about a nuclear bomb in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, and you think that IB's response to that clear and present danger OF A NUCLEAR FREAKING BOMB was to impose a $.59 fee on those products.....you should really be concerned about IB's basic intelligence and certainly their ability to manage risk!
I'm confused. Just a few minutes ago you said they charged a $.59 fee to dissuade risky traders. Now you're saying something entirely different, that they are building excess reserves with it. Do we have any evidence that Interactive Brokers is doing anything other than meeting their reserve obligation under Rule 15c3-3 like every other broker not charging these fees? Any indication that they have increased their excess reserves in conjunction with starting to charge these fees? Any indication that $.59 on a few thousand contracts covers the tail risk of what again, just to remind you of what this discussion is about, of a nuclear bomb! Or maybe it's just going to the demigod's bottom line. Which again isn't a problem at all, just don't piss on people and tell them it's raining.Brokers cover tail risk by charging fees and building reserves.
When the CHF spiked. IB took a loss for millions which it covered out of its cash reserves. Exact loss would be how much they could not recover from clients who went negative.
IB could increase commissions/fees on all the clients by $0.01 (or whatever) to cover these events or $0.59 dollars (or whatever) on just the most risky of its clients, ie. the ones that are most likely to be hit by these events because they are in the market over the longest periods.
Not on crude oil, but IB started charging me a Daily Exposure Fee since late October. I wrote about this in my journal, in the entry which I posted on November 1st. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/trading-as-a-hobby.305910/page-5 I simply consider this an extra cost of "doing business", i.e. trading my system.My system happened to be shorting two contracts of crude oil last week. Over the weekend, I receive an email threatening to charge $0.59 per contract per day if I don't liquidate those positions in 4 days. The emails says that my worst exposure is $102,906, which in my case is for two contracts of crude oil. So I suppose IB thinks crude can rise from $57 to $108 over some weekend.
The email says "Exposure will be calculated for accounts based upon open positions at the end of business on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and the Fee will be charged to accounts on Monday (Next Trading Day)." Does that mean as long as I don't hold positions over weekends, I won't ever be charged?
If I sell and hold that one contract of crude for one year, I will only be charge $148 per contract for daily exposure fee. Gosh I hope I can make more than that! But to see this in different way, $148 is the equivalent of me being charged the regular commission 60 times just for holding one contract for a year. That sounds more like a sure way for IB to extract profit, even if I don't trade 60 times per year.