cohenmichaela, I am far from been questioning your intelligence. I apologize if you understood me this way. The only thing I am questioning is a deep knowledge of an instrument that you are trading. From my point of view it is a sin and you will pay for it.
ids, Your last post was completely unproductive. You can end this discussion with you helping me and proving I'm wrong in one stroke. Please answer my question...
Cash is the preferred method of meeting the performance bond. T-bills also can be used to meet it, but only 90% of the T-bill's value at most futures brokerages. You were able to buy futures options contracts that had a higher market value than your account because you are spreading/hedging which has a lower performance bond requirement than an outright speculative play.
Thanks to everyone for you're response. I took a step back and thought about it. Everything ids, ddunbar, and alanm have been saying makes complete sense to me. I now know you need cash on hand to pay for long gamma (minus credits from short positions). The problem I was having was relating it to long ES 1260 puts I legged into. I executed this transaction from my PC at work so I was using the Webtrader. Therefore, these transactions weren't in my TWS audit log. Upon further analysis I checked my trade confirmations and realised that I actually legged into the put debit spread. Specifically I longed 10 ES 1260 puts, then short 10 ES 1250 puts, then long 10 ES 1260 puts, then short 10 ES 1250 puts. This lines up exactly with what everyone has been trying to tell me. I had forgotten that I legged into the put debits and was therefore confused and obstinate about how cash for premium was supposed to work. I apologize to everyone for wasting their time. I'd also like to thank ids for attempting to assist me with this. Although I wasn't always pleased with the tone of his (or her) response he was just trying to help me understand and I realise that. He was even going to take the time to look up my account and try to gather the details. I greatly appreciate this has well. It renews my faith in IB customer service that they would make this effort on a public forum. I'd also like to say that I think there's room for improvement with IBs customer service. I know this latest issue was due to my misunderstanding but I think the mentality with IBs customer service and how they deal with customers leaves people feeling helpless and insulted. Perhaps if the first CS agent I spoke with was more interested in helping me understand the situation as opposed to insisting that I was just wrong and needed to deposit more money then I wouldn't have felt so dissatisfied. To the point, we live in a capitalistic world where IB is supplying a product to their customers. The discount brokerage world is obviously a very competitive market. I believe a good business model, regardless of who is right or wrong, is to make the customer fully understand a situation while being has respectful and professional as possible. My experience with IB CS has not been so for any of the past 3 tickets I've had this week. I still have faith in IB and believe overall that they offer a good product. I'm also hoping that IB makes right on the previous mistake it made which incurred a 6300 dollar loss in my account. Again, thanks to everyone for helping me realise the error in my thinking. I will keep you updated.
Yes, there's always. It is much room for improvement. I have heard many bad stories about customer services mentioned in other threads and other people. They are rude and impatient to their customers. Other competitors do better in this regard. cohenmichaela, I hope you will sort out your problem as soon as possible.
Thanks Trader Herry. I hope so too. From my experience with IB, customer service is their only area in need of significant improvement. Overall I have been very satisfied with their product...
I have "heard" the same thing. The thing is, the few times I have had the need to contact customer service I have never "experienced" it. I think it is a load of crap. OldTrader
I think you need to quit beating that customer service drum. It looks to me like part of the problem here was your own lack of understanding of the product that you trade. Customer service was giving you the right answer, but you could hardly "hear" it given your various complaints. As I said in my original post, what we see quite often here is a customer who does not understand the situation and is accusing IB of various things. Further, I would suggest that the next time you find it necessary to apologize, you make it sincere instead of coupling it with all the extraneous charges about their customer service. OldTrader
Cut him some slack OT. In fact, cut him a lot of slack. If you review the situation with what details are provided, you'll see that IB made a "mistake" originally. A critical one. Now put yourself in M. Cohen's shoes. Wake up Monday morning and nothing is making sense and your account is down some 25%. Wouldn't you be going crazy? Eyes and head tight. Blood pressure up... The first incident had nothing to do with his understanding/misunderstanding. It was something completely out of his control. SO yeah, given that incident, he'd be... heck, anybody would be overly sensitive to possible additional errors. This is not like the noobs who blame IB for things that relate to their lack of understanding and lack of personal responsibility we see on here so often. This incident actually started with something that was IB's responsibility. But they've made good on one part of it and are working on the other. Personally, I've never had a problem with IB's customer service. Neither with their manner or their methods. While I empathize with M. Cohen, in looking back to figure out why IDS from IB responded the way he did (basically saying that if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it - we can say things like that, but for a representative of a company, it's generally bad form), I find that the thread title is a bit provocative. Specifically the "will they fix it" part. But the opening post smooths that over IMO. But at the same time I understand the thread title and the motivation - comes back to waking up Monday morning and saying to yourself when you look at your account, "WTF?!"
The truth is I agree with IDS....if you don't know what you're doing you shouldn't be doing it. Now, whether he should have siad it or not, I couldn't say from a customer service standpoint since I am not in customer service (if you couldn't tell). But the bottom line is it's the truth. In fact, this whole thread has to do with a guy who doesn't know what he's doing (in my opinion). From the start he was trying to "squeeze" a few nickles out of a position...never thinking evidently what would happen if the contracts were assigned and he ended up short in a big gap up. I can remember so many times that something like that has happened I've lost count. But the point is that had he not been "squeezing" he wouldn't have gotten the erroneous stuff that followed. But futher, he obviously doesn't understand the margin concerning the vehicle he's trading. And according to him, he's been trading it 3 years. Frankly, it's time the guy got a wakeup call! Now whether IDS should have said it, again, I can't say. But I empathize with IDS, epecially after having to wade through the crap this guy was handing out. Now, maybe I'm out of line. You evidently think so, and probably he does too. But I'm calling it the way I see it, and I'm too damn old to learn a new trick on that. I do hope they straighten the trade out for him. OldTrader