You are right. In my 401K account in Fidelity, I can not trade long spread call (buy Call at lower strike price and sell the call at higher strike price for the same month).
But you shorted SPY Friday to cover assignment, and your shorts were closed Monday. I never thought IB would let you short stocks. ??
I'm not sure where Monday is coming from. The short calls in my IC were assigned Friday morning and the resulting short stock position was liquidated 10 minutes after market open. That's how it went down. Except for not making money on my IC this month, the actual assignment process was painless.
Why would you ever want to get exercised ? If it was a slip as "forgotten" you should not even be trading.
To not get ripped off by a mile wide B/A spread on deep ITM options with a very liquid underlying just before expiration
What he said. Plus I didn't *want* to get assigned. I wanted SPY to close below my short strike. It eventually did but it would have been less complicated if I hadn't been assigned.