I suspect either a software glitch or your individual situation somehow slipped between their controls in this instance.
I've had a number of bizarre one-off looking incidents over the years with IB as well. If - and it can be a BIG if - I can get to the right guy at IB that really knows what's going on, sometimes we can figure out precisely what happened. Stuff that's flat out wrong and horribly egregious and could wreck my account...it happens.
I know that cancellation function still works because I trade futures options and I have to leg smaller pieces of spreads at times. One may execute and some other leg just turns red because it will result in margin issues. I know it's slightly different from your situation. I would try to get to someone at IB that will explain how their algo works. This might be impossible, but worth a try. Someone there knows...and figuring out why this one time it failed may be a simple thing and maybe you can avoid it in the future.
A few months back I had a few ITM spreads that were expiring and exercising. At 4pm Friday, my account value dropped by 40% in an instant and the options disappeared. They had taken the positions away but failed to provide me with the cash. Obviously I went batshit. It was 3 days later before the money was restored and fortunately I wasn't on tilt with margin at that time - harrowing anyway. I later learned that it was just a random thing that certain contracts "didn't get around to getting exercised internally" and it wound up getting fixed later.
Today, I don't let anything expire in the money. It sucks, but I can't risk this happening again.
I've had a number of bizarre one-off looking incidents over the years with IB as well. If - and it can be a BIG if - I can get to the right guy at IB that really knows what's going on, sometimes we can figure out precisely what happened. Stuff that's flat out wrong and horribly egregious and could wreck my account...it happens.
I know that cancellation function still works because I trade futures options and I have to leg smaller pieces of spreads at times. One may execute and some other leg just turns red because it will result in margin issues. I know it's slightly different from your situation. I would try to get to someone at IB that will explain how their algo works. This might be impossible, but worth a try. Someone there knows...and figuring out why this one time it failed may be a simple thing and maybe you can avoid it in the future.
A few months back I had a few ITM spreads that were expiring and exercising. At 4pm Friday, my account value dropped by 40% in an instant and the options disappeared. They had taken the positions away but failed to provide me with the cash. Obviously I went batshit. It was 3 days later before the money was restored and fortunately I wasn't on tilt with margin at that time - harrowing anyway. I later learned that it was just a random thing that certain contracts "didn't get around to getting exercised internally" and it wound up getting fixed later.
Today, I don't let anything expire in the money. It sucks, but I can't risk this happening again.
