I had been trading a stock/fund listed in Amsterdam, (AEB) but as of recently I cannot buy it; I get the following message"closing transactions only". Have been on phone, chat, & ticket w/ customer service, get an explanation that "due to some clearing issues we have restricted any additional positions being opened in symbol xxx. I am being told we are no longer able to clear and settle this stock and it has been restricted as a result" I have insisted that this IB-specific problem be resolved, and, true to IB's high standards of customer care, I get useless repetition of the former statement, over & over. As usual, if you want customer service the only way to get it is to post publicly, so this is my post on the subject. Hence the provocative title to this thread. The symbol does not really matter; this is kind of an odd issue; has anybody else had a similar problem & if so been able to force IB to recognize & fix it? -Cheers
Other stocks seem to work fine on AEB, I was faced with the "Closing transactions only " a couple of times before with IB, the issue seems to be with the particular stock/etf rather than the exchange (last time I remember it happened was with the pan asian bond fund traded in USD on HKSE whereas trading HK stocks was otherwise possible
Had the same problem a few weeks ago for a symbol on OTCBB. According to the IB helpdesk the clearing stopped supporting the symbol. A few days later I was suddenly able to trade the symbol again.
^ Gentlemen, thank you both for your comments, from which I conclude that this is likely a temporary issue.
I wouldn't be sure it's a temporary issue only, just checked again 2821, the pan asia bond etf and it still shows "closing transactions only". Last i tried to buy that ETf and couldn't was at least a couple of months ago. Besides checking a long term chart it appears the trading volume has not slowed noticeably, hence I guess other brokers still offer it for trade. Do you have any feedback abt that fund btw as you trade HK stocks ? It's been weak over the last few months but it's possibly the only non china centered bond etf traded in HK with half decent volume plus it's traded in USD.
OK noted & thx for the further info. I am insisting w/ IB that they fix this & insisting it is a deficiency. In the case of my issue, I was able to verify w/ 2 other brokers that they still support trading, so it IS an IB issue. As "professional's gateway to the world's mrkts" (loosely paraphrasing) this is not acceptable, clearly. I am curious what happened if you had to close open positions that had this issue, if they cannot clear how on earth can you close the position ?!?! I also cannot open position in your bond fund: I suggest you do as I am and insist that this be "fixed" -Cheers
IB flags certain securities as "closing only" for various business reasons unrelated to clearing issues. Some penny stocks for example, some things with DTC restrictions, non-standard options, etc. You can still generally close those positions, just not open new ones.
I asked Def from IB to explain what is going on here. Hopefuly he will find out and let us know if this is temporary or permanent
Cool thx, I've got "Varoon" sorta looking into it but it's a bit like trying to push a door open with a wet noodle & I cannot get a straight answer about temporary vs permanent (nobody knows I reckon). I am exerting as much pressure as I can to make the fund available once more but don't have any leverage, hopefully you can add some pressure as well.