Why cant IB allow shorting of BTC futures with a margin requirement of 500-1000%?
- Thread starter Daal
- Start date
They do this for volatile stocks. Some are 100% long but 200-500% requirement to short. What they really need for bitcoin futures is a 24x7 market. Then at least if it's liquid, the brokers can blow you of your short fast enough they don't lose money and they can offer leverage on the short side. But if it might gap up 2x the weekend, they don't want to be offering more than 2x leverage.
I'm confused.
It's a bit odd to use the word "shorting" for futures contracts in my experience. They aren't 'borrowed' - the contracts simply get created/destroyed as people trade...
Anyway... presuming that by "shorting" they mean initiating a position by selling contracts... If that isn't allowed by lots of brokers, then who exactly are we going to be buying them from?
Creating a one sided market will surely lead to more issues than preventing two-sided trade.
It's a bit odd to use the word "shorting" for futures contracts in my experience. They aren't 'borrowed' - the contracts simply get created/destroyed as people trade...
Anyway... presuming that by "shorting" they mean initiating a position by selling contracts... If that isn't allowed by lots of brokers, then who exactly are we going to be buying them from?
Creating a one sided market will surely lead to more issues than preventing two-sided trade.
it sounds like excellent advice from a man who is worth 19 billion. trees don't grow to the sky. buy now. enjoy the spike up as the public joins in and the shorts are squeezed. then sell them and enjoy a long term slide to zero or near zero,
I guess for most purposes futures aren't really things to borrow or sell, they are just promises to buy or sell the things that they represent at expiration.
As for not being allowed by lots of brokers...I've only heard of IBKR making that shorting restriction, and there are tons of clearing FCMs out there. How many others are going to not allow shorting?
Ya'll must live a charmed life , for the only thing that confuses you is using 'short' to describe short futures
From Investopeidia
So, a futures contract is an agreement between two parties: a short position - the party who agrees to deliver a commodity - and a long position - the party who agrees to receive a commodity. In the above scenario, the farmer would be the holder of the short position (agreeing to sell) while the bread maker would be the holder of the long (agreeing to buy). We will talk more about the outlooks of the long and short positions in the section on strategies, but for now it's important to know that every contract involves both positions.
From Investopeidia
So, a futures contract is an agreement between two parties: a short position - the party who agrees to deliver a commodity - and a long position - the party who agrees to receive a commodity. In the above scenario, the farmer would be the holder of the short position (agreeing to sell) while the bread maker would be the holder of the long (agreeing to buy). We will talk more about the outlooks of the long and short positions in the section on strategies, but for now it's important to know that every contract involves both positions.
I also clear with Wedbush and they have a few hurdles if you want to trade bitcoin.
You can't see because that part is so flat, but the 32 bucks high (22 on the chart) on June 6th, 2011 wasn't reached again for almost 2 years, until February 2013.
I would say a drop from 32 to 2 is considered a major bear market.
You can see it if you change the time frame and leave out the last 2 years...
Correction: Once I changed the time frame, the price is much clearer. The second bear market was from $230 (not 140 I posted earlier) to 75 in 2013 between April and July.
So definitely 3 bear markets... 4 if we count what has just started.
Last edited:
L
lovethetrade
The terms bull and bear markets are typically used to describe the long-term direction (i.e. using a monthly time-frame) of the stock market. Bitcoin has had one bear market in 2014.