IB customers lose $88m trading WTI crude

Discussion in 'Interactive Brokers' started by ZBZB, Apr 21, 2020.

  1. southall

    southall

    Im wondering if they couldnt handle the negative pricing, TWS couldnt show negative prices yesterday, but today it shows them. I wonder if their risk managment systems / auto liquidator were enabled for negative pricing either.
     
    #21     Apr 21, 2020
  2. ZBZB

    ZBZB

    What was the crude margin?
     
    #22     Apr 21, 2020
  3. southall

    southall

    CL was $8000, when ES was $36000.

    That was about a month ago.

    Clearly IB didn't realise it could go negative.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2020
    #23     Apr 21, 2020
    d08 likes this.
  4. mskl

    mskl

    Listen to the conference call

    go to the 25 minute mark

    https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/9eq4zqvf

    Pretty scary imo. they "still don't know what happened". cash settled losses

    WTI contract listed on ICE Europe
    some losses in the QM contract
     
    #24     Apr 21, 2020
    Cdntrader likes this.
  5. ZBZB

    ZBZB

    IB TWS looked like it wasn’t programmed for negative prices yesterday. It went to 0.0 at 2:30 est when I think it stopped trading a day before the last trading day. Today when I thought it had stopped trading it did go negative but the chart was a real mess.
     
    #25     Apr 21, 2020
    d08 likes this.
  6. ZBZB

    ZBZB

    maybe the ice Europe contract is illiquid and somebody got stuck.
     
    #26     Apr 21, 2020
  7. easymon1

    easymon1

    maybe IB can buy up a truckload of mortgage traunches to make it all back real fast, yeah, that's the ticket.
    was IB the sore thumb in this circus or did other brokers get nailed as well?
     
    #27     Apr 21, 2020
  8. Maybe somebody did it on purpose to freeroll IB. Get a big long position at one broker, get a big short position at another broker, and then any big move either way makes one account go negative. Then you cash out the other account and move to Bermuda.
     
    #28     Apr 21, 2020
    cruisecontrol and comagnum like this.
  9. easymon1

    easymon1

    you should write a book, lol
     
    #29     Apr 21, 2020
  10. Fain

    Fain

    They had 15% of the open interest. so there's other ones that were burnt but probably not as bad.
     
    #30     Apr 21, 2020