I am used to spread betting. When you can find loop hole to beat those sharks, it is quite satisfying. They often use lots of tricks to stop you winning legitimately. When you win in a way they cant hedge against. IB is not a spread betting firm. So yeah it is not ethical to knowingly take advantage of them.
How much notice does CME need to give for something that every professional already knows? CME was issuing advisories about the possibility of negative pricing weeks before it happened. It was the last trading day for the majority of the contracts that IBKR lost money on: WTI@ICE. CME also already has trading halts when oil moves +/-15%. Icahn had multiple hours of negative pricing to buy if he could find the volume.
Every professional? Your counting the professional above the broker ? If the broker them selves didnt know thats a problem. Dont forget the professional needs the broker not the other way around
Imagine if Mr Shah had waited and bought 2000 for a penny. He would have a been in hole for $75 million just by himself. That would have been an even better story to tell for the rest of his life.
Usually in unprecedented situations in life, the learning curve is pretty steep for most individuals and groups. Little experience and context to draw upon, even for professionals. Some get annihilated. Extreme examples of risk management on the fly are 9/11 and the hospital meltdowns in parts of Europe with Covid 19. With what happened in oil, I too was watching what was happening via Sierra charts and my price froze at one cent. I was not in a position, but knew there had to be some major chaos going on. Hopefully everybody involved, from the CME, FCMs, brokers to traders learned some really important lessons about risk management, which is at the heart of trading, and paying sufficient attention to details! It is just a wonder it did not turn out even worse than it did. Good for IB for trying to straighten things out.
I can already smell the scent of massive class action lawsuit. How could a broker so large as IB have screwed up so colossally? BTW if my broker gave me an incorrect quote, then any loss I incur is not my responsibility.
My guess most of the old/orginal employees are rich from stock options and have taken the eye off the ball, including Peterfly himself. Now a new breed of low paid incompetent grunts are doing most of the work.
I wasn't remotely trying to trade CL that day. But of course I knew what was going on and couldn't take my eyes off the train wreck. And yes, I didn't know it could go negative (because I didn't think it through; wasn't necessary). And I said so in this forum on that day that I didn't know. But as prices kept sliding towards zero, I did look around and realized it could. And you could bet anything that I would have found out about it lot sooner if I actually had a position on, long or short