peterfly has gone nuts. Its high time we need an IB competitor http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=278006
there is < 5K tickers on NYSE and NASDAQ combined. more than half of them are illiquid trash. so.. i wouldn't pay much of attention to 'exploded' 10K names\tickers list.
And plenty of the names have over a billion in mkt cap and more than 500k in average volume - not exactly 'illiquid trash'.
none of that means squat. The criteria is "can the name get cut in half or worse overnight", leaving the broker to battle with the idiot that owned it to make good.
well.. you have to understand one thing(besides Stock's,mentioned above)-they are private company and can do whatever they want. they done this many times in the past on various securities. they done this on 2007-09 on corp bonds. ALL OF THEM. AAA,GE-most liquid-whatever. overnight,without single warning. 100% margin. you can only borrow on cash you hold. your AAA bonds on account-doesn't matter.can't borrow against them. not a dime. nothing new to me.
Maybe the FOMC minutes release has something to do with it.... Seems to me IB is anticipating a sharp downdraft, and is protecting itself before it happens by forcing you to lighten up now instead of begging for your cash later....
It's really not the FOMC, it's been like this for more than a week now. Are they trying to kill equity trading, forcing everyone into options where the spreads are bigger (more games to be played).
What are the 3 posts above about ? Didn't receive any message from IB to inform of a margin hike and don't notice any difference on my account or margin report ?? Any link ?
IB doesn't really inform traders if they hike margins on stocks, they just do it. NQ (NQ Mobile) has a 200% margin req for shorts, that's absurd if you ask me.