You're an institutional investor! Wow, just wow. Weren't you the guy telling me market makers "facilitate trades" rather than taking positions a short time ago?
Not sure what you're talking about re MMs, but yes I'm a personal and institutional investor. I assume you're a person of dignity, respect and accomplishment. You seem like an intelligent and knowledgeable fellow. As the good book says: "Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults" -- good advice, whatever you think of the book itself.
So this isn't an attack on you, but I think an important way to think about thinking. In general we have an idea, in the scientific method we call it a hypothesis. Something that we might justify by hypothesizing event type A can't happen because B is true. So far no problem, we have a hypothesis out there and maybe we're starting to form a belief around it. Then someone reviews your work and says, actually every single time an event A has happened, and we have numerous examples, B was true. The human response to that is to fetch around for other reasons that A can't happen, even though your original reason for forming that belief turned out to be incorrect. That's why humans lived in caves eating raw meat for millennia. The scientific method would be to say, perhaps I should reconsider my hypothesis and any underlying beliefs I've formed because of it, given that the basis for it was shown to be incorrect, instead of or at least in addition to trying to find another basis to support my original hypothesis. That's hard to do. Hard for me and you, it's even hard for scientists to do, as we see so often in the scientific community. I'm an engineer by training so biased but I think they actually do a better job at this because the bridge collapses or the phone doesn't work if they fetch around rather than revising their hypothesis. This way of thinking doesn't have to be restricted to scientists and engineers though, it has great value in all walks of life, especially trading and portfolio management. Food for thought.
I know if you are an international customer of an SIPC covered broker you are covered, the SIPC website actually specifically states that. But if IB Hong Kong is a separate entity you may be entirely correct that it isn't covered. I'd be interested in someone with more knowledge on that than me providing some input?
Have a look: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...nts-transferred-to-newly-formed-ib-hk.296054/ IB had forced all Hong Kong customers to move to IB Hong Kong which is a local company in Hong Kong and not covered by SIPC at all. It only covers by the Hong Kong gov related fund for very little bit amount of money (around 20K US dollars) for Hong Kong market stocks and future, nothing is protected other than these 2.
Not sure what to make of all that, but my oft-stated 'hypothesis,' -- IB is as solid as any top-of-league table FCM that takes retail'ish accounts -- and ADM is the only real comp --is well-supported by the available evidence. No one has put forth disconfirming evidence, i.e. that IB is more fragile than peergroup FCMs.
IB is a large and as far as we know stable company. They aren't immune to failure because their CEO has a lot to lose, that's all.