Meaninugless numbers in IB at night times

Could be wrong, but what I noticed from many AH option quotes, is that IB bases the account BP on the mid point of the individual position's B/A. And with some GTC orders on the books with the MMs, those B/A prices can be way away from the market.

A more satisfactory method might be to base account #s on "last sale". Of course for very low liquidity issues - very deep I/O of the money - this could also be problematic.
 
Choad and others

No the original problem I reported was way beyond any logic like the mid-point of the trades etc. Now that we discussed so much, I am going to present an example in the given screen shot.

In the attached PDF, the first part is my today (13-Mar-06) portfolio showing an April 75 Call option (short) current valuation showing as $8.40 (last trading price) and the day's trading range showing as $0.85 - $8.40 in IB. Based on my shorting value of $3.21 this shows as an unrealized loss of $519 for one contract.

In fact, this option was trading only in the range of $0.85 to $1.15 as indicated in the quote from Yahoo! Finance data also from the same day (13-Mar-06). Close was at $1.05 so the current unrealized profit of $216 based on my shorting price of $3.21.

It is this kind of startling difference that I wanted to bring up to notice in this post. As I stated earlier, this is just a display problem, for a short while during the night, during which time even the "Account" window shows the net liquidity and other calculations incorrectly. But by the next trading session in the morning, everything is back to normal.

For a company of IB's size and stature these kind of errors are not ignorable, and if they feel the same way, it is upto DEF or other IB folks to answer why this happens, and take it up for a correction within IB.


-Ram
 

Attachments

Ram: It would have been useful to include the account window snapshot (without the account number, of course).

The Yahoo quotes are correct - the last trade was on CBOE for 1.05. AAPL hasn't been near $83 in two months, so the 8.30 price is obviously unreasonable (and not on the tape).

IB: Last I remember with an issue like this, there were supposed to have been sanity checks in place to constrain option position valuations to prices reasonably based on the underlying, no?
 
How does this actually pose a problem to the original poster who does not trade overnight? So what if your account shows you have a loss? Get over it.

Now if it is actually causing a problem for you on a 'trading' basis, fine, I can understand the concern. But from the original post, it certainly didn't sound like it. So when you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and you go and check your IB account for the 597th time that day, just keep in mind that the values aren't accurate and repeat "i'm okay, i'm okay, i'm okay...."
 
Quote from plugger: How does this actually pose a problem to the original poster who does not trade overnight?

It's been pointed out that this is a problem for others, who need to trade products that are open at that time (i.e. pretty much every significant futures market on the planet, including the US). Thus, the interest in getting it resolved.
 
Alanm, for you it is a problem, no question there. For the original poster, he clearly stated it wasn't.

He reminds me of clients who used to complain that the firm i used to work for used the closing 'bid' price to value securities in their account instead of the closing price. It didn't affect THEM yet it 'bothered' them. If you have a legitimate complaint, fine, something should be done. If it's because your panties get a little twisted in the middle of the night, then leave it be.
 
Quote from plugger:

Alanm, for you it is a problem, no question there. For the original poster, he clearly stated it wasn't.

He reminds me of clients who used to complain that the firm i used to work for used the closing 'bid' price to value securities in their account instead of the closing price. It didn't affect THEM yet it 'bothered' them. If you have a legitimate complaint, fine, something should be done. If it's because your panties get a little twisted in the middle of the night, then leave it be.
More...

As my original post implied, I didn't realize it had any impact on overnight equity in the account. The PNL figure on the TWS is not account equity but whether the overnight option valuation does or doesn't impact equity, I've forwarded your mail along so someone in the know can take a look and take appropriate remedial action.
 
plugger

I used to trade futures in the night, but not actively doing it these days. But when I did trade in the night times, I don't remember to have seen any impact on my trading ability.

However, this post is about why at all the meaningless numbers should appear in the TWS in the first place, and how to bring it to the attention of IB in the first place.. Its not a trading related error as I clearly stated but an error we would like to get rid of nevertheless. If a bunch of these kind of features go unnoticed and uncorrected, the platform loses its respect with the major user population over a period of time.

I had success in getting another similar error corrected in IB web trader by raising a ticket and following it up for a month, in the past. I feel the elitetrader forum is easier than that to report such matters and I get the advantage of the momentum, of the crowd.

There are people who go to the doctor for a common cold and then there are those who assure themselves to ignore and wait until the ailment into a much more serious condition. This is definitely one of the former types. As in any other forum You definitely can choose not to post if this adds no value to your needs. As such your posts do not add any value to the discussion that is going on here either, so we'd much rather prefer if you don't compel yourself to post when you go to the bathroom 597th time in the night.

-Ram
 
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