I don't want to turn this into a firm vs. firm issue. I want people to understand that they should not be asking about PM, they should be asking how to interpret/use the specific margin requirements of their broker. For what it's worth, you guys are the farthest away from it from what I have seen. From how you edited your first response Mr. IDS I hope everyone can see how childish and uniformed employees of Interactive Brokers are. They don't have a reputation for poor customer service for nothing. You clearly don't understand PM, you have even stated such.
I know for fact that your statement is incorrect. The PM cannot be implemented as you described it in any retail brokerage company. So, what my reaction should be? I agree with, "I want people to understand that they should not be asking about PM, they should be asking how to interpret/use the specific margin requirements of their broker. " Everything else in your messages is wrong.
IB offers PM good enough in terms of the leverage based on the portfolio risk. But in terms of the margin financing it's far off the mark.
IDS, I am not sure why you want to go out of your way to start a fight. How old are you exactly, how many years have you been a risk manager, how many hours have you spent working with managers at the OCC about their RBH file and how Haircut (PM) is calculated? Feel free to regale me with your "facts". I never stated what you should be doing or what any other firm should be doing, I stated that OCC Haircut is calculated as a 15% move for equities. What each individual firm decides to do with it is up to them, and that is what traders here should be focusing on.
You are more or less correctly described RBH for naked stocks but you called it PM in your first letter. PM is not RBH. Retail client will not get pure RBH with any broker. There are regulations for it. You are misinformed and misinforming others. I am not fighting. I am trying to prevent people from your errors.
You refuse to answer my questions, refuse to give specifics or reference data to information, and refuse to back up any of your statements. As far as I can see you are worthless. I know what PM is and I know what the RBH is, I have forgotten more about the TIMS system than you will ever know so this discussion is pointless. You keep thinking I am saying minimum PM is enough to protect a retail firm; I never said that and never will. If you want to be of some service to all these people posting then come up with actual facts and figures, quote the prevailing regulations, don't say ridiculous things like "try out our demo software and that will tell you how we calculate margin". IB must be proud to have someone working there that just says others are wrong without explaining what is wrong, why it is wrong, and proving it. Don't bother replying, I will save you the trouble: IDS thinks of the above - Snide remark, you are wrong, you are dumb, snide remark, no actual information.
Please, read http://www.finra.org/web/groups/rules_regs/documents/notice_to_members/p018677.pdf Look at the long list of requirements for approval. An approval is impossible if RBH is the only safeguard. Think for a minute why if it is as easy as you described only a few companies offer PM after almost 8 month is gone? BTW, it took a minute on Google from me to find this document. You could do the same. I am done with this discussion.
There you go, was that so hard? You are actually posting information, I am proud of you. As I have stated several times now, minimum PM is not enough to protect a retail firm, especially when you are talking about something like out of the money naked options. What people here want you to explain is item o. "A description of house margin requirements if they differ from the TIMS requirement;"
http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/marginRequirements/margin.php?ib_entity=llc and pick Portfolio Margin.
ids, would you be able to comment on why I was able to receive a higher leverage when I was naked long vs if I was dollar hedged. Does your algo for calculating an acceptible at worst case scenario not take into account that many of the stocks that are traded are in fact correlated with the S&P. From my findings I find that if you have a dollar netural strategy trading stocks that are fairly correlated to the S&P your swings are about 1/7 vs if you were naked long / naked short. It seems like your algo doesn't take this into consideration, however on your website it mentions that one who uses a strategy that is hedged can benefit from PM