IB changes margin rules abruptly without informing

Quote from njrookie1:

if you do not do 10K future contracts, IB is pretty competitive.

their way of ruthlessly enforcing margin requirement - sometime not exactly correctly - makes me feel safe about the firm and my money.
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you mean 10k conts per month not per day. Correct?
 
I have never liked IB and I will never have an account with them. There is just something about them I don't like. They have great range of services and account options but their trade platform stinks. Their data feed, don't even get me started. My automated strategies don't work in Ninjatrader7 with IB feed as well (my programmer has tested three different feeds, IB was the only one that did not work correctly).
 
Quote from gmst:

I have been a long time IB customer and I trade fairly actively.


1) Earlier, TWS didn't use to execute an order if after execution, it will result into a margin call. Today I was fully margined, I was long NQ fully margined, and had a limit order to execute long ES which would have clealy resulted into margin liquidation upon execution. As soon as ES price moved to my limit price, my order executed instead of being cancelled and shortly afterwards IB auto-liquidated it. It resulted into a loss, I had not cared to cancel my standing long ES limit order since I believed it would have been rejected by IB. How can IB change its policy without informing clients?

auto-liquidated.
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Hi there..can't address IB specific problems however a suggestion for the future....

you wanted to go long the ES but margin wouldn't sustain it so you got auto liquidated. Prior to going long the cash...IF... you had purchased a FOM weekly ES put for lets say 75-125 bucks the margin required to be long would have been substantially reduced saving the auto liquidation. It also allows you to stay in a trade a bit longer rather than get shaken out. Margin is a tricky business and is a crazy calc that personally I can't and don't even try to figure out myself...so I just keep my "risk" tolerable and it works.

I hope it gets worked out for you and at least explained so you fully understand what and how it happened. GL
 
Quote from RichardRimes:

Hi there..can't address IB specific problems however a suggestion for the future....

you wanted to go long the ES but margin wouldn't sustain it so you got auto liquidated. Prior to going long the cash...IF... you had purchased a FOM weekly ES put for lets say 75-125 bucks the margin required to be long would have been substantially reduced saving the auto liquidation. It also allows you to stay in a trade a bit longer rather than get shaken out. Margin is a tricky business and is a crazy calc that personally I can't and don't even try to figure out myself...so I just keep my "risk" tolerable and it works.

I hope it gets worked out for you and at least explained so you fully understand what and how it happened. GL
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Richard, Thanks for taking the time to write about this trick. I trade only futures and FX, so I haven't really done any work on options. But this is an interesting direction for me to manage risk in future when I start trading more products. I appreciate it :)
 
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