Screwed by IB? "Tough luck dude"

I used IB in the past and sometimes positions that I thought were closed were actually open. I remember this one time where I was trading an AMEX listed stock. I was on the phone with IB "Customer Service" for hours where the reply to me was "we'll call the exchange".

I started keeping screenshots of the TWS pages so I could prove what was happening. After a while, I simply went over to TradeStation. I couldnt stand knowing that when the blotter says no open positions there still might be open positions.

Im not sold on IB with the TWS clock lagging in 5-10 seconds slower then the official time and then the blotter not being the actual blotter at times.

Im sorry IB sponsor, but these are my actual experiences.
 
LOL ... IB to Tradestation

Can you say "frying pan to fire?"

And the clock thing. Can't you morons master the internet - just because your mamma says its 11:00am doesn't mean its so.


All I can say is "thank god you've gone." Every peckerwood idiot that leaves IB is another reduction in the cost of trying to serve moron "customers". Good bye and good riddance. And a sincere thank you for leaving.
 
Quote from Lobster:

I have had a few margin calls with IB, and yes, it usually works out so that you lose money, and if only you had been allowed to stay in the position, you would have been able to later get out at a lesser loss. That's what margin calls are all about. It's not IB's fault. On the contrary, I'm sure one of the reasons IB can offer low commissions is the efficiency with which they execute forced liquidations / manage their risks. In a way, they maximize their profit this way.

That said, whenever I had a forced liquidation in my IB account, IB did almost exactly the minimum amount necessary to satisfy their margin requirement while trying to keep my portfolio undisturbed, in other words, while their first priority is controlling their own risk by enforcing their margin requirements, a close second is to minimize impact on the client's account.

The latest example: MLK day: I bought 2 ES, and it ended up dropping to the point of a margin call. IB sold just 1 of my contracts (close to the bottom, of course), and I ended up pretty much breaking even on the entire trade when ES shot up that day or the next (I don't remember exactly, I was not actively trading over the holiday.)

If the market had moved farther down, IB would have liquidated my 2nd contract, and I would have lost more than if they had sold both right away. The way it played out, I came out ahead because of the way they handled it.

Either way, it seems obvious to me that IB did the right thing by me. It's not their job to speculate on my behalf. It is their job to let me carry out my own speculation within their risk parameters, and that's exactly what they have always done for me.
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Great post and glad you came out whole. This is all that you can ask of a broker who is exposed by another's speculation.
 
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