well if you have a -USD balance you are going to have to buy the $ on the market. Go and read the IB website about currency exchange. they have two gateways to the currency market IDEALPRO for large transactions and IDEAL for small transactions. you should also read about interest rate spreads...do you understand why you owe that interest? also, since i'm guessing you are fairly new at this, and i can't stress this enough, KEEP YOUR SIZE SMALL. unless you were holding the positions for a long time, you were clearly taking very large positions in order to rack up that much interest without knowing. you have to stay in the game long enough to figure out whats going on. set it up so that you are risking no more than 1% of account equity on any given trade. best of luck
First let me thank you for your patience and willingness to educate me. I actually held a 2.5 lot short position for about 10 days. So, what you're basically telling me is that since I have -241.95 EUR (interest payable) I have to buy 242 EUR on IDEAL? Then adjust my position to 0, and ignore the 242 EUR long position in my account window under MARKET VALUE?
you know i'm not sure about that one...i think the accrued interest should be in USD not EUR, and IB normally just deducts it from your account at the end of the month... do a CHAT with a customer service rep at IB. Chat is normally quite helpful and will be instant unlike a problem ticket
Let me know what you find out JK124 because I think I've had a similar issue for quite a while (IB said to just ignore it by unchecking "Show FX positions" and "Warn on exit with position"). For months now, I have shown a 1643 long EURUSD on IDEALPRO (and Current Initial Margin at 0.00). However, if I try to get this position to zero by selling 1643 on IDEAL my Current Initial Margin goes to ~$4.30.
This happens when you trade an instrument that is denominated in another currency. IB will xchange the USD into that currency to initiate the trade. When the trade is later unwinded, the native currency is xchanged back into USD. IB uses the original xchange rate to transfer back to USD. However since the currency rates also have moved, you end up with either a debit or a credit in the account. I have a similar situation since I trade the Nikkei ( and ocassionally the Hang Seng). I always have a small perpetual JPY currency position inspite of closing out the Nikkei trades. Even when I close the difference on IDEAL, there is a small position that is always there. Probably an IB bug they haven't figured out how to fix.