Is IB cheating you?

Oh boy, another phd in math. Reminds me of when I used to sell home appliances. I was dealing with this guy on a built in appliance. It was a wall oven. I told him to go home and measure the spot it went into before I sold it to him (it was to be special ordered). He started ranted about how he was an engineer, etc etc. Well, I made him pay cash for it, and ordered.

Guess what happened when he got it home. Nope, didn't fit. And it was all brick and concrete around so nothing to do. The idiot came back yelling and screaming and demanding a refund.
 
In all fairness, I remember once I thought there was a discrepancy in my account and I called IB. The IB representative spent something like half hour with me on the phone. We walked back through about 75 RT trades "trade by trade"! We noted the P/L for each and every trade together. At the end I realized where I had been wrong! His competence, patience and attention was great. I feel like I need to give credit where credit it is due... FWIW
 
Quote from electron:

I did double check all the numbers before posting this. I have a Ph.D. in mathematics and I am not a dummy when it comes to numbers. BTW, thanks for all your 'valuable' contributions. Just about what I expected from this crowd.

Now, you can close the thread...
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Dont u dumbies get it? You aren't catching the IB cheating scam cause you don't have a PhD in mathematics!
 
Quote from SethArb:

this thread !:)
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No reason to close it yet... The thread originator deserves the discrediting (the most polite word I could think of) he's getting.
 
Electron: I keep a spreadsheet running all the time for each trade and total trades. Often times the P&L window in the "account" window wil show a loss on a position when actually the trade generated a gain. It is always a result of FIFO on partial positions.

Could this be part of the problem?
 
Quote from white17:

Electron: I keep a spreadsheet running all the time for each trade and total trades. Often times the P&L window in the "account" window wil show a loss on a position when actually the trade generated a gain. It is always a result of FIFO on partial positions.

Could this be part of the problem?
More...

While we believe our accounting is correct, and we take substantial efforts to ensure this, errors can happen. It is completely inappropriate to assume this is a matter of intent or malfeasance on IB's part.

If anyone believes there is a genuine systematic error in the accounting as reported in the statements, please send an email to help@interactivebrokers.com with the string 'JC111' in the subject line. Please provide the details needed to examine the problem and we will treat it as a priority matter to review, and if necessary, correct.

On related points that arose in this thread:
Please be aware that the real-time pnls on the account window and the main (order management) window can differ due to different calculation logic. The order management version is session based and expresses the pnl only since the last close. It gets its data from locally stored files which can be damaged. The Account Window is driven by IB's risk management and clearing systems and is a far better indicator given it is not session dependent. However, it does use average cost which can produce unexpected results for traders who are thinking FIFO or LIFO or other sequencing logic in their pnl estimations (the totals will be the same but the break between realized/unrealized will be different).

Lastly, IB recently upgraded the Account Window. The new version provides far greater detail about financial capacity and margin requirements. A particular feature is the 'lookahead' margin which shows the expected margin requirement at the next time it will change schema (i.e. the next time any contract in the portfolio will change from intraday to overnight margins or vice-versa). This should allow traders to anticipate upcoming requirements and avoid undesired liquidations.

However a side effect of the upgrade is that we removed the realized/unrealized pnl splits in the Account Window. We will reintroduce them in a more sophisticated form in the next release of the Account Window as part of planned enhancements that will provide better use of capital for commodity traders with combined options and futures positions.

I hope this is of assistance.

Jon
IB Management
 
I do a daily reconciliation of my account statement to my own records maintained in Quicken. The few times I've found a difference, I've gone line-by-line to find MY ERROR. But if you don't keep up with it daily and you do a lot of trading, it can be very difficult to reconcile your books. So keep up with it!

As for IB errors, the only thing I have ever gone back to them on has been missing dividends. I use to average 1 or 2 a month that I did not get. But I haven't had a problem in 3+ months so I think they must have made some improvements in this area.
 
Do you honestly think IB would try and cheat you out of money ? No way, Jose. IB would never risk something that stupid.

I strongly suggest that you build a spreadsheet, that keeps track of your buys/sells/prices/quantities/dates. This is good for your record keeping, and you should reconcile it at the end of each trading day, with your IB Account & Execution screens. A spreadsheet is good to keep for IRS reasons as well.
 
Hey, I have the same problem.

There's an unaccounted for .001 cent, dating back to 2001 in my IB account.

Haven't traded well since then , as it's gnawing at me.

I sympathise.
 
yes, the P&L in the account window can be wrong, as it is an 'estimation' of the current market value.
sometimes because of the average cost and also because of the bid ask spread. with a wide spread, the current market value constantly change widely.

so I can understand the confusion sometimes.
I do think TWS is using too many different ways to compute the P&L.
also, there is no single way to do it (because of FIFO, LIFO or scaling).

I don't see the big deal although if a trader does not track his entry price (or avg cost) it can be a problem (you can't totally rely on TWS with an OPENED position). once the position is closed the P&L for the account is always correct.
indeed you can't trust the P&L while you have opened position.

this is why, several of us use external programs to track P&L. and these programs must let you select your P&L calculation method, otherwise you still have the same issue. also, you still may see a difference between what you think your P&L is and what these software compute.
it's a very difficult problem to solve since there are several solutions with several results (all valid!).

at least, I finally think I understand what happened to you (I think).
it's frustrating, but easy to work around imo.
 
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