IB introduced their "Advisor Account" platform a while ago for those who want to trade several accounts with one click of a button. Basically, you can allocate each account the number of shares/contracts you want to trade in advance. Sounds good huh? I have been using it for several months and my experience is negative - today I decided to give up and transfer my accounts leaving IB. Just one example: let' say that yesterday I traded 10 contracts (on each acct). I shorted 10 and later I covered 10. The TWS clearly indicated that there were no open contracts left - in the Execution window you can see the details of all 10 contracts you purchased back. So far so good. Today morning everything is looking just fine and normal, you think you are flat - until you start to check the individual accounts and be shocked to see that they all have one contract open position - most of them are short and one of them is long!!!!! The one long made some money today, all the shorts lost! Obviously the way the platform handles the allocations is not correct and more importantly the real time feedback is not working. In plain English: if you use the AdvisorAcct platform, be ready for some nasty surprises! I have made screenshots on several occasions - so I can prove everything I am saying here.
I've noticed the same problem. The allocation differs. I've also noticed that if I open the "account" window and view any particular account, that subsequently if I create an order line, for positions to enter or exit, the amount of contracts/shares will reflect the same amount of whatever last account I was viewing, and not the actual number of shares or contracts in the accounts themselves. So from time to time, where I wished to allocate 52 and 48 %, it's actually apportioned 50/50, or has picked up an absoulte value from one account only, and so on. I have found twice that not all shares were exited and that a few were even reversed because of the misallocation. Be on the watch too when you do an upgrade as it can rest the allocation profile on you. So now I don't even use the share allocation feature. I just set up each account with an order line. It's still just as fast enough going click, click, click...
i have been using the fa account for months now with no problems like that and i love it. i only trade stocks though. i can see a potential problem if you change the allocation profile mid day and accidently sell from the wrong account.i have suggested to ib that when selling positions the software have the ability to automatically override the allocation profile and default to the accounts that hold the positions. they said they are studying my suggestion.