Unauthorized trades on my IB account.

I am dumbfounded by your post. You say there were unauthorized trades in your account, but you couldn't wait more then 15 minutes before you hung up on IB? I'm assuming that is because they were winners.

They would be able to tell you were and how the trades were placed. Were they for margin reasons? Were they meant for another account? What IP address where they placed from? You will never know these answers because you have only 15 minutes to spare. I'm guessing that if this happens again and you lose a lot of money, you will be able to devote more time to finding an answer.
 
FSU said:
I am dumbfounded by your post. You say there were unauthorized trades in your account, but you couldn't wait more then 15 minutes before you hung up on IB? I'm assuming that is because they were winners.

They would be able to tell you were and how the trades were placed. Were they for margin reasons? Were they meant for another account? What IP address where they placed from? You will never know these answers because you have only 15 minutes to spare. I'm guessing that if this happens again and you lose a lot of money, you will be able to devote more time to finding an answer.
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The drawdown was less than 2% of my account when the unauthorized trades happened the first time in August and I had bigger fish to fry in August than waste time on 1-2% drawdown. Made a killing in August focusing on the price action. This time the unauthorized trades were quite profitable but I didn't know because I hadn't logged in on Monday. No margin issues. There was plenty of dry powder.
 
ids said:
It is not how it works. IB cannot open positions if an account is in bad standing. It could close positions. Submit a ticket if it really happened.
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True, usually they close existing positions. Last time I didn’t recognize couple of them but I may just have too much shit going on to match them up with my previous trades, I was just a bit surprised but remembered this happened before. It was trouble enough to deal with and reshuffle the trades I didn’t personally place. My margin looked ok but I realized it would’ve been negative as soon as I saw those trades next day. IB recalculates margin overnight but acts preemptively before market closes.
It is something worth being aware of.


Lucius Lupus said:
Mine weren't any options for hedging. IB just increased the size of my ES shorts by 4 times. I entered the short position on Friday close and didn't log in on Monday.
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What time were those trades placed?
 
guru said:
True, usually they close existing positions. Last time I didn’t recognize couple of them but I may just have too much shit going on to match them up with my previous trades, I was just a bit surprised but remembered this happened before. It was trouble enough to deal with and reshuffle the trades I didn’t personally place. My margin looked ok but I realized it would’ve been negative as soon as I saw those trades next day. IB recalculates margin overnight but acts preemptively before market closes.
It is something worth being aware of.





What time were those trades placed?
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Jus before close on Friday.
 
ids said:
It is not how it works. IB cannot open positions if an account is in bad standing. It could close positions. Submit a ticket if it really happened.
More...


Btw, I suspect in my case they wouldn’t be able to close some of my positions at fair market value because they are complex SPX option combos that change value between -$0.20 to +$0.20 (besides even wider bid/ask spreads), so mathematically by unknown or very high percentage, difficult to calculate or even close ad-hoc, and I have hundreds of them. I was convinced they’ve placed couple new basic trades due to possible legal issues from inability to close my positions properly.
 
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guru said:
I think my trades happened at 12:54 PM PST (15:54 EST). This looks very similar to your situation.
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Just logged in to check and it happened at 3:44 PM EST.
 
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guru said:
I think my trades happened at 12:54 PM PST (15:54 EST). This looks very similar to your situation.
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In terms of timing and the positions being harmless yes. But the underlying question is how and why can IB open positions without your permission. Your options were bought automatically, right?
 
Lucius Lupus said:
In terms of timing and the positions being harmless yes. But the underlying question is how and why can IB open positions without your permission. Your options were bought automatically, right?
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Yes, but based on the situation I described. And this happened 3-4 times in the past, and I quickly understood why, so didn’t bother calling IB, just learned from experience. I would’ve called IB if I wouldn’t be able to explain this or simply had sufficient margin to begin with.
In your case you should keep calling IB or open online support ticket.
 
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Reminds me of when I got my truck stolen. The detective called to see if I wanted to press charges when they caught the kids - I declined because they detailed it, filled up the tank, and left a few ounces of Maui-Wowi in it.

I would change your password and setup the IBs security to allow only your IP address.
 
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