Even if IB allow it, the question is will SIPC recognise the transfer for protection purposes? I guess there is a real possibility that the SIPC appointed trustee in any bankruptcy could deny your claim based on the reasoning that the money in the securities account was last used for commodities trading at the same firm.
Cat...for now at least IB will not allow it. One could open another cash or margin acct and do transfers.
I just sent an email to thinkorswim, and they stated that they continue to auto sweep excess funds from your Penson futures account back to your TDA securities account. Since they have not made any changes you have to wonder why IB suddenly, and without notice, put their customers at more risk.
Just to be sure to do at least one actual securities trades with the transfered funds otherwise those funds might not be SIPC protected after all. Still waiting for clarification but this seems to be how the rules have been changed.
Sorry for not posting last night but I wasn't able to speak to the appropriate people before calling it a night. An announcement will be made on the IB site shortly which I understand will provide some clarification and after that perhaps we'll add more to the discussion here. For now, all I can say is that the assumptions that this a result of the MF Global crisis are correct. Given my conversation, I am very confident that we will shortly have a solution that will satisfy all parties. I know I'm not stating exactly why and what we will be doing but I'd rather wait for the official posting on our site. What I will say, is that you should probably hold off cooking up ways to move funds out/in to get to the securities side.
Not at all, but if the prospect of the demise of one of the best capitalized firms on the street keeps you awake at night then you're in the wrong business. Not saying this isn't an item for concern, but the angst is overdone.
no,but for those of us in a drawdown we have enough to worry about without worrying that if we take our loss even that which we have left will still be at risk. worry worry worry, I swear one of these days I'm just going to quit it all and go raise chickens. maybe they were right, I should have just gone to the coin dealer down the street and bought gold, then all I would have to worry about is where to hide it. otherwise it sounds like a shitty deal. no more new money will be going to IB until they get their shit together.
If something had happened to IB and they had "the sweep" still in place, I'd bet you anything that the SIPC wouldn't have honored it and there would have been some type of claw-back anyway. The powers that be did everyone a big favor by stopping all these brokers from giving a false claim of assurance on something which has never been legally challenged in the first place.