IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT U.S. OPTION EXCHANGE RULES
1. It is a violation of U.S. option exchange rules for a customer, acting alone or in concert with others, to send an order to an option exchange in order unlawfully to manipulate the execution price of a separate order on that exchange or on another exchange.
2. It is a violation of U.S. option exchange rules for a customer effectively to act as a market maker by holding itself out as willing to buy and sell securities on a regular or continuous basis. In determining whether a customer effectively is operating as a market maker, the exchanges will consider, among other things, the simultaneous or near-simultaneous entry of limit orders to buy and sell the same security; the multiple acquisition and liquidation of positions in the security during the same day; and the entry of multiple limit orders at different prices in the same security.
3. It is a violation of U.S. option exchange rules to transmit orders that have been created and communicated electronically without any manual intervention. Customers using IBâs Trader Workstation therefore are required to click a mouse, hit a key, or do some other manual action to transmit option orders. Customers with a Computer-to-Computer Interface or who use the IB Application Programming Interface (API) represent that they will not allow orders to be created and transmitted automatically without manual intervention.
4. Except for the International Securities Exchange (ISE), U.S. option exchanges have rules preventing customers from transmitting multiple orders to an option exchange on the same side of the market in the same option class within any 15-second period, either in one account or multiple accounts in which a customer has a beneficial interest. The IB system is therefore programmed to reject or delay transmission of orders on the same side of the market in the same option class that are sent by a customer to IB within any 15-second period. Customers acknowledge this and represent that they will not use multiple option trading accounts with related ownership to avoid this restriction.