Interesting details on a Canadian forum http://forums.redflagdeals.com/beware-interactive-brokers-margin-call-rrsp-2254541/ The position was liquidated at minimum of the day. I am curious how legal can this be.
IB was sued in the past for improper liquidation. Though I’d assume it forced them to improve the processes, and I believe they do it more gradually now, and in better ways than just market orders. One explanation could be that the margin became worst at the time when the stock price became worse, but I don’t understand why this needed to be done in cash account, if that still applies to this example. This example may also need checking how liquid was the stock.
%% Even though I mentioned that subshare stuff , to avoid liquidating $40,000 was the example used here. But the apple seller gets a better deal for 100 apples rather than 1. So with low or no commissions, they have to make money somewhere; I traded a no fee ETF last year. BUT you had to keep it /Wisdom Tree/30 days LOL..................................................................................It was not HI volume; so buyer beware.LOL
You’d get email notifications about trades made (if you configure it so), after the fact. In the past, with more serious margin violations I was receiving several warnings on my phone but that was a while back, while I don’t remember receiving any warnings recently for “minor” violations, although IB still acted and made trades on my behalf. Not sure if recently I didn’t see notifications because they were more minor margin violations or because something got misconfigured in my account or app. I think IB has changed how their email & desktop alerts work and I had to configure them again recently, so basically not sure if that was the problem, or IB simply didn’t provide alerts for my recent margin violation.