I'm sorry but I don't really understand your logic, I mean I don't want to close my positions at all. I never intended to close them, I am always monitoring my positions carefully and when necessary I will deposit more money into my account. When I do have access to account management, it's very easy to do. It only takes a couple of minutes after which I can transfer the money from my bank account.
With most of my positions I am at a loss right now and with others... well I've price targets and I don't want to sell everything I have just because IB decided to block access to my account management because of a not really important and most certainly not urgent questionnaire. IB said in an e-mail I need to have it filled out before November 24, that was still 4 weeks away yesterday. Failing to do so would not have a disasterous outcome, I would no longer be able to get North American market data anymore. Although that's of course really very annoying, it wouldn't be the end of the world. And I assume that as soon as I would see that I had no market data anymore I could still fill out the questionnaire and get access to this market data again.
Now what if I did what you suggest. Suggest I am going to sell all my positions and let's say as an example they are valued at $100.000. Then what if these positions would actually be very close to a bottom and they would turn around and rise substantially? I mean I would miss out on a lot of money then. Suggest it takes IB one more week to give me back access to account management and suggest that by then the positions I would have sold are now worth $110.000. What should I do then? Will IB give me $10.000 in compensation? I don't think so! Wait for them to come down again? Which they might. If I buy my positions back right away I have a loss of $10.000 just because IB did something this stupid. If I wait for the positions to get back to $100.000 and they would, I would have no damages, but if I would be waiting for my positions to get back to $100K value, and they wouldn't but instead they would keep climbing for perhaps a few years even. Then I might miss out on let's say $200.000. That seems a little bit expensive to me for not having had access to my account management for about a week.
Of course I understand that there is this risk that if I do not sell and I won't get access to account management in time, and therefore I wouldn't be able to deposit funds in time, I could be forced to sell my positions for even less. But according to my logic that's not my fault. If IB hadn't blocked access to account management I would have been able to fund my account in time and I could have kept my positions. I believe IB should NEVER block access towards such critical functionalities. Why block access to customer support because you can't complete a questionnaire for whatever reason? Why should it be impossible to access and download your statements?
I can't look into the future, all I know is that quite a few of the positions that I have are already down by so much. And of course they can always go lower, they could all go to zero. But they could also be really undervalued by now and soon take off. I don't know how long it will last before I will have access again to account management and when I will be able to deposit more money. I don't know what will happen next week with the markets. The Fed, the geopolitical situation etc.
Basically there's uncertainty and risk, keeping my positions or selling them right now can both lead to financial losses. My point still is that if IB wouldn't block access to account management I could fund my account all the way to zero if I choose to. And it should be my choice.
