IB futures intraday margins back to normal?

Partial only. There are quite a few futures which requires overnight margin for daytrading. Take a look at New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) for example. :eek: Overnight margin for daytrading is unnecessary. A good trader should get out long before the margin reaches the maintenance level anyway. IB will force you out even if you are reluctant to accept small loss.

I don't really understand even if I follow the logic of IB. IB wants to require overnight margin for daytrading when daily volatility becomes large. First daily volatlity has nothing to do with daytrading (daytrading and daily volatility is not the same). Second some futures are known to be volatile but IB accepts 50% margin. Some futures are not volatile but IB insists in 100% overnight margin for daytrading. What logic is it?

I believe this happens because IB is actually reluctant to change back to normal. IB is forced to do when there are too many traders complaining about it. However some futures are less common so they receive fewer complaints so IB is lazy to change back.

IB isn't a good firm for daytrading futures because they like to change margin requirement arbitrarily. History will repeat. They will raise the daytrading margin requirement by 100% again some day again.
 
Quote from bandit77:

Thanks ZRA. I want to have 2 accounts so when one fails, the other is available. It looks like TS and IB for me.
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Glad to hear my answer helps. Yes it is always good to open accounts in more than 1 brokerage. One outage may cost you much. It is a good investment.

IB sucks at daytrading futures. If you have 2 accounts, each can complement one another. By the way it is interesting to hear when IB defends its ill-formulated margin policy as a necessary mean to protect the firm and the clients, assuming it is the only firm who cares about the stability of a firm. Essentially all firms want to survive. Who wants to be bankrupt in the first place? In fact many big firms still survive for a long time even if they offer margin much lower than IB's.
 
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