try to understand this Say I have $10,000 USD in Account Wish to trade GBPUSD margin is 50:1 Current Price GBPUSD is 1.7683 Does this mean I can Buy : 50 x 10,000 X (1/1.7683) = $279,908 worth of GBPUSD forex.. So if it goes bad at 10% I loose $27,990 USD .. IB notes... IB does say that if market moves 3% against me it will break the trade(http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/exchanges/usIB-pro.php?ib_entity=llc) The $279908 is rounded to nearest $25000, say $270,000 Is this correct...
So if I wanted a dollar risk of $5000 USD per trade for a negative 10% move against me I could only trade GBPUSD worth of $50,000. Price : GBPUSD = 1.7683 as per above My order would be $50,000 divided by 1.7683 = 28275 units of GBPUSD So I would load into Volume of BID/ASK 28275 @ 1.7683 for GBPUSD in IB order entry software. Is this correct ?
Important News / Question : Today I noticed (for the first time) locked and crossed markets on IdealPro. It happened in EUR/USD several times today. When I saw it first, it were two Market Maker quotes which made up a locked market (19 M vs the 4 M not executing). Ok, I thought maybe IdealPro is programmed not to execute MM's quotes against each other. But later I saw a customer order sitting around not executing against the quote. How can this happen ? Has IB made changes allowing MM's to execute trades selectively or to back away? See attached screenshot. Please not also, that the market was locked for at least 15 seconds.
Correct. No. You can't lose $27,990, because you've only got $10,000. Better to think of this way: each pip is worth $27.99 for that trade. If cable sells off, say, 100 pips, to 1.7583, your UPL (unrealized P&L) is $27.99 x (-100) = -$2,799. That's 28% of your account value prior to placing that trade. If you wanted to limit your loss to 10%, or $1,000, you'd need to set a stop loss at $1,000 / $27.99 = 35 pips below your entry, i.e., 1.7648. No, not at all. That note has nothing to do with market moves. It simply describes IB's proprietary threshhold for a busted trade. If you jump on a price that's 3% or more away from the market (because of a misquote or a platform problem), don't expect to hold on to your profits from that trade, if any. You'll keep any losses, of course. (jk) No. No need to round anything. Unit increments are allowed, above 25,000. Also, that's GBP 279,908, not $279,908. Kind of an important distinction.
No, sounds like you may be confused. $5,000 risk is half your account, which I seriously doubt is what you want. What exactly are you trying to describe when you say "negative 10% move against you"? Maximum loss of 10% of your account value, i.e., $1,000 loss? Then see my earlier reply. Or something else?