Any time I've ever seen my Net Liq to be not around what I expect, it has always been from an unrealistic/erroneous quote. That said, occasionally I receive email warnings from IB that say: "Margin cushion: -100% remaining (UXXX)" Even though I'm nowhere near over-leveraging my account. (I have portfolio margin with IB, and the most recent time I received this notice from them, my leverage ratio was only about 1.1) I think the most usual time I get this notice is on a Saturday following an assignment on an equity option position. I've called IB's risk management/margin dept to inquire about it, and they've told me my account is nowhere near being at risk of a margin call or a liquidation, but they still have no idea why I am getting these notices. When it's all said and done, we live in an imperfect world with imperfect technology. Stuff that works 99.99% of the time to my satisfaction is a-ok with me, as long as things are eventually corrected for the 0.01% outliers. I am a software developer too, so I realize that in any moderate or severely complex software system, there will be bugs. If you take all the trade-offs of the low commissions and ease of placing orders into consideration, compared with the occasional technical hiccup, I think just about every trader alive today would agree that we have it pretty good... Far better than in years past.
I also think that it has "just" been a bug. No actual money or position transfer out, nor a mispricing. I also noticed this a few times. The first time I freaked out quite a bit, thought a russian hacker sold some of my stocks and wired the money to Novosibirsk or something similar; I went to IB Chat immediately, where they told me that they already worked on the (software) issue.
I had money doubled there by mistake. quickly fixed. not worth of panicking. they would notice mismatch by EOD latest.
Not intending to defend IB, but you folks have no idea now many bugs are caught BEFORE you see them . Might be 99.9%, Do you have any clue how complex the IB codebase is? I only have a complaint when obvious bugs linger, or something that should never have passed testing. Thankfully, there seem to be few of those.
It's no more complex than the dozens of other brokers out there who don't have errors with nearly their frequency. Even then you could forgive them except their absolutely horrible customer service who go into every call with the assumption that the customer is an idiot and there is no way in the world that their system could ever have a bug.
All brokers have errors. And IB's offering is particularly complex (unified account, portfolio margin, wide market coverage) which is a feature, though it comes with bugs.
Very well could be selection bias, but if you do a search here you'll see dozens and dozens of IB bugs and at most a couple for any other one broker. Certainly my experience with TOS and OptionsXpress has shown a 100% reduction in bugs from when I was with IB. And of course their customer service actually tries to determine if there is a problem rather than flatly refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a bug, which I have experienced with IB on items that were later indeed determined to be bugs in their software. You can't really let them off the hook for that just because they have a complex offering. And as someone who develops software for a living, I certainly don't expect to be off the hook because I build complex financial software.
Yes, of course. IB is by far the most-used broker by the ET crowd, ergo it draws the most 'bug reports' -- so newcomers believe it's the worst, so they complain.. rinse and repeat.
Nah, I can't agree with you on this one. The people who complain the loudest are the ones who experience the loudest problems. My broker had an error, but it was just one, in the few years I have been working with them. And so few others have had a bug with them, that nobody bothers complaining. But when bug report after bug report keeps pouring in, then one must take stock of the broker in question and ask..."Why the shitty programming? Where's the QA?" If they have so many customers, and so much capital, can't they get their issues fixed in a reasonable timeframe? There is no excuse, and I mean NO excuse, for the lack of work ethic that is pervading large companies these days. Absolutely none. Working for a brokerage firm is a white-collar job. Jesus Christ, how fucking hard IS your job, anyway, that you can't get your job done? Get the job done! Do your part and FIX YOUR PROBLEMS! You work in the front-end department? FIX THE FRONT-END! You work in back-end API development? PUT THE LATTE' DOWN and GET OFF YOUR SMARTPHONE and comfy chair, and DO YOUR JOB! Just because IB's offering is "complex" does not excuse them from properly supporting their complex platform. They MADE it complex because they had an army of programmers, and had a vision? Now support the vision you implemented with the army of programmers that made the thing, and fix the errors the programming and lack of QA has caused to exist. NO EXCUSES!