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Interactive Brokers - unannounced higher margin requirements today 10/16/15?
- Thread starter MoreLeverage
- Start date
Many small cap equities and some midcap ones, among others, just depends on how IB has classified them on a case by case basis. For example, GAME is almost a $2B market cap stock (listed ADR, $7) and it's 100% maintenance to short. NICK is a $100M small cap stock (listed, $13). I could give plenty of other examples. For a PM account such stocks have a 110% initial margin, while for a reg T margin account it's 100% for both. Even for lower priced stocks, I often saw an improvement for the reg T treatment over the present PM treatment - for example the $2.50/share minimum is $2.75/share (110%) in a PM account.What is an example of a "non-marginable securities." If it is stocks under $5.00, a reg-T account might not help.
Happy Thanksgiving and another margin hike - I just got a notice from IB that over 30 securities I hold will have their default 15% requirement raised to 50%. On the bright side, this is being done in what I would consider a responsible fashion - the increases in maintenance requirement are being phased in incrementally over the next 1.5 weeks. This is at least enough time to transfer assets elsewhere before the changes take full effect. "Overall market volatility" is cited as the motivation, rather than anything specific to the securities in question.
Has anyone else noticed similar changes?
Has anyone else noticed similar changes?
It's 20-30% of my portfolio depending on if you count it by market value effected or number of securities, although it's a higher fraction of the marginable ones since some fraction of my holdings were non-marginable or otherwise already 100%. Most of the effected stocks are small caps.30 Securities ? That's a lot, how wide is your portfolio ? what kind of capitalisation do they have ?
Haven't received a similar notice btw -yet , but as you have already mentionned my initial margin requirements seem to have increased recently.
Yup I saw that too. Also the margins on short options went up. Even very deep OTM on SPX. PM for 1x contract that was ATM was only a little more than a contract that was 200 points OTM. I asked IB customer service how they calculated this and they said "there's a house rules algo". Well if you can't share it with me, I don't know how you're going to calculate it and I can't trade based on that uncertainty. Ended up moving everything to ToS. They may end up changing margin policy too but at least their PM requirements are clearly disclosed in a document
I have to agree. My research has shown that both clear disclosure and giving proper advanced notice seem to be anathema to Interactive Brokers. The most egregious wrongdoing I've found so far is the thread where IB suddenly decided to cut off futures trading in ALL retirement accounts without any notice whatsoever.Yup I saw that too. Also the margins on short options went up. Even very deep OTM on SPX. PM for 1x contract that was ATM was only a little more than a contract that was 200 points OTM. I asked IB customer service how they calculated this and they said "there's a house rules algo". Well if you can't share it with me, I don't know how you're going to calculate it and I can't trade based on that uncertainty. Ended up moving everything to ToS. They may end up changing margin policy too but at least their PM requirements are clearly disclosed in a document