Interactive brokers: pending orders in excess of IRA account net liquidation

[markd01]

Are you able to place many pending limit orders in IRA accounts at Interactive Brokers in excess of account net liquidation? I was under the impression that IB unlike other brokers does not decrease buying power until a trade fills.

It seems that this is somewhat available in margin enabled taxable accounts but not IRAs. In IRA's your pending orders have to be <= account value.

Are there any workarounds for this? Ex. portfolio margin, margin enabled IRA? I use triggers as opposed to live orders at TD Ameritrade. The only imperfect solution I know of is OCA group of orders at IB.. or using API to trigger orders when the price is near my limit order.

Thank you!

Mark

 

[comintel]

Quote from markd01:

Are you able to place many pending limit orders in IRA accounts at Interactive Brokers in excess of account net liquidation? I was under the impression that IB unlike other brokers does not decrease buying power until a trade fills.

It seems that this is somewhat available in margin enabled taxable accounts but not IRAs. In IRA's your pending orders have to be <= account value.

Are there any workarounds for this? Ex. portfolio margin, margin enabled IRA? I use triggers as opposed to live orders at TD Ameritrade. The only imperfect solution I know of is OCA group of orders at IB.. or using API to trigger orders when the price is near my limit order.

Thank you!

Mark

Using API would be the best way.

 

[markd01]

Has anyone actually implemented any of the workarounds to trade IRA accounts at Interactive Brokers, and is effectively able to have more ending orders than the account value?

 

[markd01]

Quote from comintel:

Using API would be the best way.

Given TD Ameritrade has server side triggers, would you still use IB and implement your own triggers through the API which means worrying about computer and Internet connection availability on the client side..?

 

[comintel]

Quote from markd01:

Given TD Ameritrade has server side triggers, would you still use IB and implement your own triggers through the API which means worrying about computer and Internet connection availability on the client side..?

It depends how you are trading - frequency etc.

Just calculate the percentages out.

Assume say 1% connection problems. How would that affect your trading? How quickly do you need to react to the market? What are the consequences of a communications failure?

Ultimately you may be better with the API anyway because you can design your own triggers rather than accept prepackaged ones.

BUT it is considerable time and effort to develop the API code. You have to trade that all off.

It seems to me that IB does not always count open orders against you. Sometimes they seemed to, sometimes not. I would talk to them.