only an idiot moron would be happy that they raise the margins for intra-day trading. your the loser for supporting and increase in margins. what is your freaking problem. if you are professional trader that higher margins the better. less capital requirement is good. more buying power.
i don't know any professional trader who likes it when margins go up, fees go up, and commissions goes up. that is why this 'business' if you can call it a business is bullsheet
there many futures brokers who have much lower intra-day capital requirments than IB if you are a professional you need at least 2 brokers as a backup. http://www.elitetrader.com/br/
I visited the IB web site for the first time, and the outfit looks like a very professional entity. Given some of the threads I have read regarding IB's apparent heavy hand with dotting the i's and crossing the t's, I think the problem may be one of "culture". I have little use for stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc. I am a "futures" guy. A pure FCM, in my experience, has a different clientel than a stock broker. IB looks like they offer a very wide selection of markets, which also includes futures. I can tell by the website, that IB would not be a good fit for me, but a great fit for stock traders who also want future's access. My two cents is that there are Futures traders and Stock traders, sort of like a Mets fan and a Yankee fan. Regarding your remarks on small cap traders and margin, I think you are being a tad bit judgemental. Margin requirements do not sound like they are a problem for you, and they are not a problem for me, but everybody has to start somewhere and at some level. Does IB have account size minimums ?? If so, then I would assume all clients met the IB size requirements, and your apparent disdain for your fellow IB traders seems somewhat hypocritical, if I may be so bold.
You may be as bold as you wish; wrong but bold. Each of IB's customers has the respect from me that they deserve. I have a great deal of respect for Jim and oldtrader .... but you can figure out how much I should have for some of the others. So today we get a run of twits whinging about margin. I trade nothing but futures too. If someone wants to trade a lot of contracts then they should find another broker. Simple. And when the shxt hits the fan they can enjoy it. In the mean time I will be happy with IB; I won't need a bunch of backup brokers in case my broker goes out of business. IB's culture suits me and a bunch of other experience traders here at et and elsewhere. It doesn't suit fools, whingers, twxts and other brokers shills. The more of those fools and undercapitalised losers leave IB and fxck off elsewhere the happier I will be
I respect your opinion. I will end my remarks by admitting that when I started trading, some 20 years ago, I was a foolish and un-disciplined "trader". I would venture a wager that most of us started out in a similar manner. "Big" traders started out as small traders. Not all small cap traders will remain fools. Thank you for your remarks.
Traders use IB as a broker for two keys reasons- experience and expectations. If you understand how the markets work and how brokers work you want to use a broker that has the same understanding. You don't want your hard earned capital being risked by the broker or by the broker's other customers due to poor risk management by the broker. I don't recall traders here at ET complaing about the risk management policies and practices of any broker except IB. That makes you wonder if all the other brokers have any effective risk management policies and practices at all. How many other futures firms have risk management policies and practices like those of MF Global - whoops, $141.5 million down the drain by one trader. Knowledgeable traders appreciate the fact that IB's risk management policies and practices are heartless. If your account violates margin requirements then your account automatically gets liquidated to bring it back into compliance. No exceptions for whiners and losers. IB protects itself and in doing so it protects all customers. I am not happy about putting up full margin for intraday futures trades, but I understand why IB has temporarily changed their futures margin policy. At some point in the future the margin requiremnets will go back to normal. In the meantime, the higher day trading futures margins costs IB money because futures traders are doing less trading and paying less commissions. How many other brokers prize risk management above commission income? Any one who does not like IB's margin policies and practices is free to use any of the numerous other brokers that are out there and I strongly recommend that you stay away from IB, as they are not the broker for you. And for the mathematically challanged morons in this thread, a doubling of intraday futures margin is a 100% increase, not a 300% increase.
i don't give shit about getting respect from you or anybody in the street. as far as you are concern your just another player in the arena whether you have $10,000 or $500,000 or 10 million.
You don't need to worry about getting my respect. Although I do thank you for repeating my message and jebb's. Perhaps someone else's skull is not so thick that they completely miss the point. Your second post after this displays either total ignorance (what a halfwit!) or that you are another broker's shill. I'd go with the second except that you're embarrassing ... too embarrassing.