IB's 4% Intraday Initial Margin Req. for Index Futures

You are just being an ass, and your post doesn't even address the issues in my post; therefore I will not grace it with a direct reply. I will say this, however. I have generally not been pleased with the amount of slippage I get through IB. I think their risk control implementation adds critical milliseconds, resulting in poorer fills, especially as you begin to push the limits of the contract, i.e. 20-50 say in ER2.

Secondly, I do not like the way they interpret the margin rules, and I believe this interpretation results in a disadvantage to IB futures traders. These are only my observations, and they are valid for me alone. YMMV.

They are wonderful for many reasons, but I personally wouldn't trade futures through them. I have found their data feed to keep up the best with x-trader, fwiw. Their smart routing rarely gives any issues, and their options pricing is very good. I really dislike how they give often nearly no notice to rule changes. I would really hate to be sitting there calculating my position at 10 minutes before market open, only to get a bulletin saying margins have been changed. That is annoying. I would hope for at least an 18 hour notice (close to open, for instance). Just my thoughts.
 
only reason to lower intra-day margins is they want you to deposit more cash into your brokerage account so they can use your money to trade their own acount.

for intra-day trading margins don't matter...

it's just like currency trading..it's the traders responsiblity to trade accordingly not the brokers problem. it has nothing to do with volaitlity or the broker is trying to protect you...
 
The profits come from trading their own account but the cash you deposit into your account is paid in interest and they get to use your cash when you are not using it to trade.. majority of people don't daytrade.


Quote from Htrader:

I doubt IB will lower margin rates anytime in the near future.

What most don't understand is that IBKR doesn't really care about its retail division. The vast majority of its profits come from their timber hill branch. They could probably close their entire futures division and not miss a beat.
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Interactive Brokers is mostly a retail broker. and their clients are retail clients that have jobs outside trading. they can't daytrade when they are working. in a 9-5 job and you can't trade on saturdays or sundays (most people don't trade on sundays in US). with ibkr

Quote from vectors101:

The profits come from trading their own account but the cash you deposit into your account is paid in interest and they get to use your cash when you are not using it to trade.. majority of people don't daytrade.
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Quote from gov:

I have generally not been pleased with the amount of slippage I get through IB. I think their risk control implementation adds critical milliseconds, resulting in poorer fills, especially as you begin to push the limits of the contract, i.e. 20-50 say in ER2.

Secondly, I do not like the way they interpret the margin rules, and I believe this interpretation results in a disadvantage to IB futures traders.
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The slippage has nothing to do with the TWS platform and ES has the most liquidity out of all the index futures.

I think you are just losing money and trying to blame it on your broker.:p
 
Good point!

it seems that some of the index futures have already been back to 50% intraday margin req.


Quote from Zanatos:

You can be assured that IB will bring down the margin rates as soon as they get over this anxiety attack they're having...because undoubtedly they are losing millions in lost commission...they make more money the lower the commissions are (thus more contracts being traded)
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Quote from vectors101:

only reason to lower intra-day margins is they want you to deposit more cash into your brokerage account so they can use your money to trade their own acount.
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Vector101, you make a number of inaccurate statements in your posts but the one above is so false and mis-leading that I'll comment.

You clearly don't understand the term segregation of accounts nor have the ability to read a financial statement. Under no circumstance does IBG's proprietary trading division utilize funds deposited under the brokerage division to trade.
 
Quote from roadstar4:

direct competitors of IB like Tradestation offer 1000 dollars day trading margins...
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But how big of an account do you have to have with TS?

In their Futures Margins Requirements they now list $1000 day trade
rate with "*call for details" for ER2, ES, YM...

Plus I have heard their trade execution speed is slowwww....
 
Quote from roadstar4:



may not be a very good sign financial condition of IB.
people, or companies, usually are very scared for a reason...
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Maybe they believe the terrorists will hit pretty soon as advertised by the gov...
 
Quote from vectors101:

Interactive Brokers is mostly a retail broker. and their clients are retail clients that have jobs outside trading. they can't daytrade when they are working. in a 9-5 job and you can't trade on saturdays or sundays (most people don't trade on sundays in US). with ibkr
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V101 - the epitome of ignorance.
 
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