Pls help about how to exercise an option? :S

[mickael28]

Hi guys,

A really basic question to see if someone can help me to get started with options.

Basically, I've been studying for a while how they work and their purpose and I wanted to try the theory in a demo account, I've tried with Interactive Brokers and SaxoTrader.

The problem I am having is that I am not able to exercise any American type option that I have tried. For example, I'm buying an ITM option (either a put with a strike price well above the market or a call option with its strike price below) and then a few minutes later I try to exercise it, I've tried with US stocks or futures and in both cases getting errors in those demo accounts. SaxoTrader is giving 'internal server' error and Interactive Broker 'unknow error', but the options stay in my account so I can just close the position but not exercise it.

Any idea what I could be doing wrong or what I could try to see this exercise process working pls?

Many thanks!!

 

[Martinghoul]

It's a demo account and, clearly, exercising American options early is not supported by the demo platforms you're using.

The natural place to seek answers to your questions would be the demo platform providers (Saxo and IB). I don't think you should expect to find an answer to such a question on them Internets.

 

[mickael28]

Thanks Martinghoul,

I didn't contact IB yet (as I wanted to make sure I was not missing something basic and I've heard they're not too helpful with newbies), however I did contact Saxo and it seems their support team doesn't know too much what I was talking about, ie, I told them that I was using the windows application and I had that problem and they asked me to delete my cache and cookies?

I tried in their web interface as well, but as expected, same problem there.

I'm thinking is a limitation of the demo account at the moment, but wanted to practice a little before funding the real account... I'll try some more platforms and see if they supported that feature.

Cheers.