Robert, The SIPC protection and their balance sheet will, I predict, keep you right where you are. Given the times we live in you are home already.
Thanks John It is interesting that based on that website the OCC is jointly owned by the exchanges and they set a time limit of 4:30P CT as a cutoff time to exercise an option that does not expire until Saturday Your link website also says that the OCC is the counter party to all transacations (much like futures) so perhaps as the counter party they legally could exercise and arb it with afterhours trading any option that went into the money that was not exercised already. since the exchange members appear to own the OCC they would be able to make a lot of risk free gains As I recall options used to expire on Friday and they changed it to Saturday so why only change the time of being able to exercise to 4:30 on Friday?
From the CBOE website - http://www.cboe.com/learncenter/glossary.aspx#expirationtime Expiration date The day on which an option contract becomes void. The expiration date for listed stock options is the Saturday after the third Friday of the expiration month. Holders of options should indicate their desire to exercise, if they wish to do so, by this date. See also Expiration Time and Automatic Exercise. Expiration time The time of day by which all exercise notices must be received on the expiration date. Technically, the expiration time is currently 5:00PM on the expiration date, but public holders of option contracts must indicate their desire to exercise no later than 5:30PM on the business day preceding the expiration date. The times are Eastern Time. See also Expiration Date.
Robert, you're really reading way too much into this. My history could be sketchy but if I recall the process used to be that the Saturday notice is a relic of days gone by where the first batch of exercise/assignments would be processed Friday evening and a second or third round of DK's (don't knows) for trades that didn't match up were processed the following morning. Back then all orders - buy/sell were submitted by brokers and had to be matched manually. That is no longer the case. There is nothing funny going on behind the scenes.
and BP now trades below 43.50 - so IB saved you some money after all - if you still want to own BP...
yes had I held over the weekend but that misses the point completely. I am long BP both in stock and short puts but I would have covered and exercised at the same time so actually no money was saved it was lost. Although I no longer have a belief that IB was the resulting factor or did anything with the BP calls
I just talked to an IB senior director. They agreed to let you excecise your expired worthless options. I just did it for you. Let me know if you are still interested.
Hey Bob, Been down a similiar road with IB. While they are correct it brought me over to the futures side full time. There are a few that compete price wise with IB these days, but they all have similiar customer service, ie not much. My experience was quite awhile ago and involved a reporting of a trade. It wasn't worth the cost of a lawyer, but it was enough for me to leave IB and go full time in futures. It took awhile to find a firm on this side also, but overall the futures retail side has been better to me than the retail equity side. This was ther reason I have been looking to go back to the equity side with a series 7 firm instead of retail. If you can do school and think about law school you could do the series 7 no problem. Mostly just memorizing. IB has alot of good, but the bad for me was horrible. It took way to long to talk to someone who knew what they were talking about. Getting Def on ET is nice, but they should have his kind available on the phone for advanced problems, and my experience was it took threats to get to that level. As advanced as they maybe I believe they make most of their money off the crowd trying to figure out the business than they do long term people. My problem was a long time ago, and maybe they are better, but they lost my business for good. Sorry for the negativity, and hope all is well. Take it easy, Bob