Interactive Brokers is a scam, 2-3x margin maintenance requirements

B

bongey

(Note I love IB's trading platform that supports linux, so I am very unhappy about firing them).
Interactive Brokers is a scam by having much higher margin maintence requirements they force you into having to trade more, thus more commissions and they can just liquidate your account. Good for me I only transferred in half from current broker,they are getting fired after being on the job for 3 days.

Their margin maintenance requirements are higher 2-3x as high as other brokers.
Example AMD
Capital One 30%
LightSpeed 25%
IB idiots > 66% WTF???? REALLY!!!!

I have a masters degree in math, they try to give you some none-sense about their risk management group coming up with this value.That is none-sense.
AMD would have to drop more than a 1/3 in a day for them to lose any money at all.
That just isn't going to happen, AMD is not going to drop to 8 dollars from 13 in a single day.(note rough math there)
Honestly I think they aren't doing much of any risk analysts, the percent is almost exactly the median analyst target price. Not much about probabilities there

Reality this is just higher to force you into more trades for more commissions.

I am going to give another broker a try.
Disappointed because I am basically I am making HALF of what I make trading crappy old web base Capital One Investing. Let that sink in, make more money using a crappy web base simple solution.
 
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I agree, it's ridiculous as of late. Great rates, little possibilities to use them. If you're properly diversified, not taking a lot of risk, this is a huge negative as they assume every trader is an idiot.
 
bongey said:
(Note I love IB's trading platform that supports linux, so I am very unhappy about firing them).
Interactive Brokers is a scam by having much higher margin maintence requirements they force you into having to trade more, thus more commissions and they can just liquidate your account. Good for me I only transferred in half from current broker,they are getting fired after being on the job for 3 days.

Their margin maintenance requirements are higher 2-3x as high as other brokers.
Example AMD
Capital One 30%
LightSpeed 25%
IB idiots > 66% WTF???? REALLY!!!!

I have a masters degree in math, they try to give you some none-sense about their risk management group coming up with this value.That is none-sense.
AMD would have to drop more than a 1/3 in a day for them to lose any money at all.
That just isn't going to happen, AMD is not going to drop to 8 dollars from 13 in a single day.(note rough math there)
Honestly I think they aren't doing much of any risk analysts, the percent is almost exactly the median analyst target price. Not much about probabilities there

Reality this is just higher to force you into more trades for more commissions.

I am going to give another broker a try.
Disappointed because I am basically I am making HALF of what I make trading crappy old web base Capital One Investing. Let that sink in, make more money using a crappy web base simple solution.
More...

Don't you think IB's margin requirements reflect their sense of higher market risk at this time... trying to protect both customers and themselves?
 
bongey said:
(Note I love IB's trading platform that supports linux, so I am very unhappy about firing them).
Interactive Brokers is a scam by having much higher margin maintence requirements they force you into having to trade more, thus more commissions and they can just liquidate your account. Good for me I only transferred in half from current broker,they are getting fired after being on the job for 3 days.

Their margin maintenance requirements are higher 2-3x as high as other brokers.
Example AMD
Capital One 30%
LightSpeed 25%
IB idiots > 66% WTF???? REALLY!!!!

I have a masters degree in math, they try to give you some none-sense about their risk management group coming up with this value.That is none-sense.
AMD would have to drop more than a 1/3 in a day for them to lose any money at all.
That just isn't going to happen, AMD is not going to drop to 8 dollars from 13 in a single day.(note rough math there)
Honestly I think they aren't doing much of any risk analysts, the percent is almost exactly the median analyst target price. Not much about probabilities there

Reality this is just higher to force you into more trades for more commissions.

I am going to give another broker a try.
Disappointed because I am basically I am making HALF of what I make trading crappy old web base Capital One Investing. Let that sink in, make more money using a crappy web base simple solution.
More...

Why won't AMD go down from 8 to 13 ? The company could announce something over the week-end and lose half their value, that has happened very often in the past if you analyse all the universe of stocks.

Them forcing you to post more margin should be a GOOD thing, it means the likelihood of IB blowing up is reduced.

I fail to see how a higher margin requirement forces you to trade more ?
 
[QUOTE NOTE My post got merged with yours="bongey, post: 4424664, member: 496731"](Note I love IB's trading platform that supports linux, so I am very unhappy about firing them).
Interactive Brokers is a scam by having much higher margin maintence requirements they force you into having to trade more, thus more commissions and they can just liquidate your account. Good for me I only transferred in half from current broker,they are getting fired after being on the job for 3 days.

Their margin maintenance requirements are higher 2-3x as high as other brokers.
Example AMD
Capital One 30%
LightSpeed 25%
IB idiots > 66% WTF???? REALLY!!!!

I have a masters degree in math, they try to give you some none-sense about their risk management group coming up with this value.That is none-sense.
AMD would have to drop more than a 1/3 in a day for them to lose any money at all.
That just isn't going to happen, AMD is not going to drop to 8 dollars from 13 in a single day.(note rough math there)..........[Partial quote/QUOTE]
%%

Bon; i see your point.
but AMD single stock risk could be much better or much WORSE than that. Congrats on masters in math. We would hope+ pray the AMD specialist could keep it from that, but we cant promise that. Hope this helps; it helped me
 
define: scam -- google's def

scam
skam/
noun
informal
  1. 1.
    a dishonest scheme; a fraud.

I don't see how you can accuse them of being dishonest for charging more than they think you should charge on margin. Sorry, but "scam" does not fit the definition above. If they are really ripping people off that badly, then more people like you will go somewhere else and they will be forced to re-evaluate their business plan. Personally, I've been very happy with IB. Also, they don't force you to take any trade. It's YOUR decision to take a trade and if the decision is coming down to margin, then that seems like a very fragile trading strategy. Also, their margin rates depend on a lot of factors including their overall risk profile. It's like me coming on here and and accusing Allstate of being a scam because they charge more than GEICO for MY driver's insurance. Doesn't make sense!
 
bongey said:
AMD is not going to drop to 8 dollars from 13 in a single day
More...

hmm how long are you following the markets?

AMD was at 2 just one year ago, and has a history of bouncing around hard. It seems to flirt with bankruptcy every couple of years. It is in the volatile tech hardware sector, currently "worth" 13 billion in the market, yet still showed a loss for the latest quarter. Book value is 400 million and tangible book 100m.

What this tells me is that AMD's current market value is mostly due to hope for future profitability. This kind of hope can evaporate very quickly.

Maybe one day you'll thank IB for preventing you to leverage up on this.
 
d08 said:
I agree, it's ridiculous as of late. Great rates, little possibilities to use them. If you're properly diversified, not taking a lot of risk, this is a huge negative as they assume every trader is an idiot.
More...
IB is well known to be more risk-averse than most brokers. I didn't think that was to protect individuals from themselves but to prevent a liquidity disaster that could affect all account holders.
 
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