JUNE CL Contract - Trading Restricted at TD Ameritrade Mid-Day

I was trading the CL contract today on TDAmeritrade (using TOS), and after executing over 20 trades on the June CL contract between 9am and 1pm, I all of a sudden was not able to place any new orders.

TD AMERITRADE stealthly restricted trading right before the steep drop that took it to 6.5. My account was very well capitalized and i was trading 1 contract at a time (I had 5x the amount of margin needed).

I reached out to TD Ameritrade support and after about 30 minutes of wait - I got this message:

"Due to increased volatility and liquidity concerns around negative pricing, our Risk teams have set /CLM20 Futures� to closing only at this time. At this time we do not have a timetable on when they will allow opening trades on this again."

Has this happened to anyone else, either with TDA or with other brokers?

 

Other brokers are doing this as well. Some of them are jacking up margin to the moon.

It shouldn't surprise you. Even well capitalized people will be brought to their knees by a 200% drop LOL.

 

Which other brokers are restricting access? Can you please name them?

I totally get the need to increase the margin but I was trading with 5x the required margin in my account but to restrict access in the middle of a busy day trading session (with no heads up or warning) seems unfair.

 

AMP Futures first disabled intra margin. Then changed it to liquidation only.

 

Interactive brokers did not restrict, at least not yet. Not sure why with the margin requirements so high that they would. 8K long and 13K short margins at IB. Sorry for your situation, seems a bit off to me given how ridiculously high the margins are, but not all players practice good risk management and I assume they are just covering themselves from calls that people can't make.

 

Thats a clue that IB didnt know prices could go negative, otherwise they would have set long margin to atleast 13K aswell.

 

Mind me asking what the ticker Symbol is for the June contract on Interactive Brokers?

I have no problem finding it on TDAmeritrade, but I am in a country where I cannot trade on that platform and therefore I am looking for alternatives.

Maybe there are some other good suggestions for EU Citizens?

 

They should only restrict opening LONG positions.

 

What if some idiot goes short at $-36?

 

I was trading the June contract on IB. It was wild. Luckily, I came out of it relatively unscathed. But it's not for the noobs and faint of heart.