Also, do note that IB calculates (or used to) margin thusly: margin = min(whatever they decide, current price * multiplier) Accordingly, our Mr. Shah, who just couldn't resist buying 212 contracts, was charged margin at $30 a pop . I am sure Mr. Shah didn't think for a moment how the fuck his $77k account is carrying 212 CL contracts rofl
I think TWS and the back end could handle negative prices. It would seem the boolean flag had not been enabled for the oil contracts. No software update was required in TWS to handle negative prices the next day.
Cme did their part in the sense send the notification but they did it so Soon to expiration and so silently Showing they do NOT give a Fuck about the brokers that bring them business because some Couldve gone out of business were talking cme/broker relation now not even talking about the customers
No he was smart. If prices had rallied he would have made a killing. If prices went down he could of sued IB for extending him so much margin and never had to pay the losses.
The X millions wasn't in his account. So IB would have to sue him for the money. It really wasn't his problem until IB won the case against him.