Liquidation on low volume, high beta stocks

Sorry about your loss. Though IB does tell everyone about their auto-liquidation policies, and warns that they will liquidate positions immediately when exceeding the required margin. Many IB customers experienced positions being auto-liquidated, including myself. Though I'm not risking my whole account on any particular trade.

Other brokers indeed may give you more time to cover the margin, but this doesn't mean that IB is doing something malicious. You have a choice of brokers that offer different features and benefits.
 
Yeah, if we are going to use IB we have to deal with their known weaknesses.

Although it is annoying sometimes. Today some Aug21 TSLA verticals with a max loss of $5,000 each got up to $19,500 margin req. each.

At least once you know this stuff can happen you will be able to improve at planning around IB's irrational risk control in situations like this.
 
vzhig said:
IB has whipped out my account today. Here's how it happened:

I had a short position in KELYB. The stock has a very low float and due to manipulation has sky-rocketed from $26.8 to $90. Different share class of the same company - KELYA - didn't move at all. Which, to any normal broker, would indicate that the severe mispricing at $90 was a very temporary situation and would correct itself very quickly.

But IB is not a normal broker! They've auto-liquidated my position at $85, whipping out 90% of my account. I had money at my bank, but they gave me NO WARNING and NO TIME to post additional margin. They say it's their policy to always auto-liquidate, no matter what. If price of your position spikes erroneously, they'll auto-liquidate it. NO MATTER WHAT!

The very same minute they liquidated my position at $85, the stock dropped to $75 and kept dropping and dropping since then. It's now at $34. Mispricing was very short-lived and any reasonable broker would not have liquidated the position.

So before you open an IB account or if you already have one, think twice. Realize that it's not a broker, it's an automated farm of servers trading against you!
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As of June 30, 2020 there are 63 Futures Commission Merchants (attached below); IB is only 1 on them;
 

Attachments

From a risk management perspective, it's very hard to look at the individual account, analyze the risk, and then make a forward-looking prediction whether it will retrace. If the customer has gone into a deficit, it would be "why didn't you liquidate before it was negative", and when it retraced "Why did you touch it?" This is not how risk management works.

I feel bad for the OP. Not a good situation, but my colleagues at IB did not act out of line.
 
Not sure IB did anything wrong here. I feel bad for the trader but....

Clearly there is a disconnect between the A and B shares as on August 11th the range for the B shares was 18-78. Also the borrow rate is currently over 600%. So this is a massive short squeeze in the B shares.

This is a lesson to anyone who wants to short equity and you should realize that there is risk in larger cap stocks as well. Many years ago Porsche generated a massive short squeeze in Volkswagen. The big dealers ended up short the Volkswagen common security and long another (which did not go up at all during the squeeze). Porsche then demanded delivery on everything - then it pumped higher. Virtually every dealer on the street was hit and they had to cover with literally only one seller (Porsche). Many stories on this (one below)

The point is - you just don't know how high it could have gone.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...he-worlds-priciest-firm-idUSTRE49R3I920081028
 
vzhig said:
IB has whipped out my account today. Here's how it happened:

I had a short position in KELYB. The stock has a very low float and due to manipulation has sky-rocketed from $26.8 to $90. Different share class of the same company - KELYA - didn't move at all. Which, to any normal broker, would indicate that the severe mispricing at $90 was a very temporary situation and would correct itself very quickly.

But IB is not a normal broker! They've auto-liquidated my position at $85, whipping out 90% of my account. I had money at my bank, but they gave me NO WARNING and NO TIME to post additional margin. They say it's their policy to always auto-liquidate, no matter what. If price of your position spikes erroneously, they'll auto-liquidate it. NO MATTER WHAT!

The very same minute they liquidated my position at $85, the stock dropped to $75 and kept dropping and dropping since then. It's now at $34. Mispricing was very short-lived and any reasonable broker would not have liquidated the position.

So before you open an IB account or if you already have one, think twice. Realize that it's not a broker, it's an automated farm of servers trading against you!
More...

First of all, it's "wiped out your account" not "whipped out your account". Your account is not whipped cream that you just whip out !! Just an FYI

Ok enough talk about spelling. Talking about the stock now. Looks like it's a pump & dump scheme. The same thing happened to the stock about 1 week ago as well. There is very little news about the company except that it sold its Brazillian operation and yet the stock spiked up like 100+% in just one day and then quickly retraced. Feels bad that you got caught in it. IB in its fairness does try to give you some warnings before liquidating to give you a chance to add more funds to cover any margin shortfalls but in this case, it looks like the price spike just happened too fast that there was no time and your position was getting hammered I mean the whole spike just happened over half of an hour, unless you can transfer cash from another account at IB there is no way you can transfer cash from your bank into the account at IB that fast so IB had to do something quickly to liquidate your position.

There is no way any broker would know that's mispricing. And it's not mispricing, it's genuine trading albeit dubious trading that pushed the price this high. Any broker would've done the same. Your account was running out of money!

Sorry about your loss though, bro. :(
 
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