How to rack up commissions? Hedge margin rate?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by USFinA, Nov 12, 2012.

  1. USFinA

    USFinA

    So I have an account at Interactive Brokers so I can take advantage of their cheap margin rates to finance opportunities off Wall Street.

    They're charging me a $10 per month inactivity fee, so I was wondering if you guys had any ideas on what I might do to rack up $10/month of commissions. Obviously it wouldn't be worth my time to try anything complicated, but I was thinking maybe I could do something to hedge my margin rate or else some sort of tax arbitrage?
     
  2. USFinA

    USFinA

    One way to use up the commissions in my cash account would be to invest my available cash in "selling EFPs" (ie long stock and short single stock future)...and I believe I can setup an alert triggered trade in TWS to do this automatically.

    Unfortunately, due to regulations, it doesn't seem possible to do anything similar to reduce the the interest charged in a margin account...or am I missing something?