Thanks. That would explain why the IB person said something like margin was not affected but it was better not to trade until the problem was fixed. Didn't really get the meaning at the time.
This is serious. If the bug affected margin, it could lead to auto-liquidation of positions by error. Clients may have a case to sue if the forced liquidation is caused by a bug. If anyone is hit by faulty auto-liquidation due to the bug, please keep us updated. It is important as clients to know about the risks of our broker platform. I really hate to see this happening on IB as I have been a happy customer and much of my money is on IB. If they screw me up, I screw my family up. Getting very worried now.
I thought I might have mistakenly liquidated all my portfolio positions. Really panicked for a few minutes there.
Also got this: an ~80% fall in my account value with all my stock positions vanishing and most of my futures for about 3 hours this morning. I've had this problem before, and since I trade fully automated it could have serious consequences (basically my software would automatically de-leverage and liquidate my positions for me, probably before I've even got out of bed). So I set up an error trap that means if the account value moves by more than 10% then I ignore it (and send myself an email to warn me). Of course it doesn't stop IB auto-liquidating, but that has never happened, to me at least (but then I rarely get near my leverage limits, and even with the account value I still had excess funds available, though I guess that could arguably be a fluke). GAT
If it's only a display bug, auto liquidation should not happen. My biggest worry as a client who uses margin is that this bug can actually cause auto liquidation to happen. I hope folks on this forum can share their experience so that all of us here are aware of the risks of using IB platform.
Just saw this message. Looks like a myriad of tech issues at IB. Wonder what triggered them. To GLOBEX traders: Fri Mar 9 06:32:28 2018 EST Dear Client, if your account is holding FX Future Option positions on Globex, you might experience an extreme margin increase in your account. we are investigating the margin right now.
Extreme margin increase is a worrisome problem for IBKR but not for clients. What we fear is a sudden extreme margin decrease that leads to auto-liquidation. It really does seem margin is impacted. That is scary.
I have JPY FOP positions and did not receive any notification. Have also logged into messages to check and nothing there.
An email from IB UK just received says: "Dear IBKR Client, You may have received an alert stating that there was a significant change to the value of your account. Please IGNORE this alert. It was sent in error. We sincerely apologize for any concern this may have caused you. Regards, Interactive Brokers Client Services" Thanks a lot. Just under 7 hours after the alert was received!