This is one person's testimonial about an aspect of trading options through IB.
I cut-and-pasted this from elsewhere
Comments?
(Disclaimer: I am a long-time IB customer, so I am not involved in any kind of campaign to slam IB):
âI just
wanted to pass along an experience I had with Interactive Brokers (IB) that I thought was important
for everybody to be aware of. I executed the GOOG spreads you talked about prior to earnings last
week. Yesterday, I was assigned the Feb 470 puts. IB never notified me of the assignment, which
caused a cash deficit in the account. Rather than notifying me of the deficit, they proceeded to
liquidate random positions (including non-GOOG positions) until the cash deficit was satisfied. This
liquidation happened first thing in the morning. I was alerted to the problem when I received email
confirmations of the liquidating trades. I called to inquire about the trades, and that is when they
told me I had been assigned in my account. I complained about not having an opportunity to rectify
the deficit myself, and they responded that it is not their policy to notify account holders when they
have been assigned an option! I have been a professional options trader for 16 years, and have
never heard of anything so careless and dangerous to an account holder. As even amateur traders
know, option assignments have a huge impact on the cash positions in an account. Essentially my
entire portfolio was shattered because of this situation. I called Schwab, OptionsXpress and
thinkorswim. They all have a policy of alerting account holders immediately of an assignment. I
can't understand Interactive Brokers' policy, but I think your readers should be aware of this danger
when holding an account with them. By the way, I closed my account with them immediately. They
may have the best rates, but the risk they choose to put their customers at through this policy is too
large to offset the lower rates."
I cut-and-pasted this from elsewhere
Comments?
(Disclaimer: I am a long-time IB customer, so I am not involved in any kind of campaign to slam IB):
âI just
wanted to pass along an experience I had with Interactive Brokers (IB) that I thought was important
for everybody to be aware of. I executed the GOOG spreads you talked about prior to earnings last
week. Yesterday, I was assigned the Feb 470 puts. IB never notified me of the assignment, which
caused a cash deficit in the account. Rather than notifying me of the deficit, they proceeded to
liquidate random positions (including non-GOOG positions) until the cash deficit was satisfied. This
liquidation happened first thing in the morning. I was alerted to the problem when I received email
confirmations of the liquidating trades. I called to inquire about the trades, and that is when they
told me I had been assigned in my account. I complained about not having an opportunity to rectify
the deficit myself, and they responded that it is not their policy to notify account holders when they
have been assigned an option! I have been a professional options trader for 16 years, and have
never heard of anything so careless and dangerous to an account holder. As even amateur traders
know, option assignments have a huge impact on the cash positions in an account. Essentially my
entire portfolio was shattered because of this situation. I called Schwab, OptionsXpress and
thinkorswim. They all have a policy of alerting account holders immediately of an assignment. I
can't understand Interactive Brokers' policy, but I think your readers should be aware of this danger
when holding an account with them. By the way, I closed my account with them immediately. They
may have the best rates, but the risk they choose to put their customers at through this policy is too
large to offset the lower rates."
