Interactive Brokers and their ever changing margins.

C

Craig66

After another day of getting orders rejected because I'm currently getting about 3:1 (or whatever they decide on the day) in my portfolio margin account...I want to know, are Lightspeed winding in the margins on their portfolio margined accounts?
 
Hi Craig66 - Although I like answering many of these questions publicly since I provide my direct email, I'm often surprised at the questions asked this way. We still use the OCC TIMS calculation for PM margin for day trading and add 20% to that for overnight positions for accounts under $5mm. Our PM policy has not changed with the market volatility but there are some symbols that from risk might be held higher and there are add-ons for concentrated portfolios. We also have risk shock to limit naked options sellers.
 
Thanks for the answer. I wish Lightspeed had some sort of sockets interface into their system...re-implementing everything into C++ isn't a pleasant prospect. Is there anything in the pipeline?

The question gets asked this way as a form of public venting, the IB API tells you you have 20% margin, next second, your orders are getting rejected because of some market spike, but of course you get nothing through the API to tell you about the obviously changed margins. So I started calculating the PM for myself so I could track it in real-time. So to undermine that, post Covid meltdown they change the rules almost every day...
 
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