I was holding a few ITM EOM spreads on ES for May. Given that they were safely ITM, I let them run into expiration today. I was considering taking them off earlier in the day given the IB autoexecute monster and it's moodiness, but decided against it. At the bell I got another surprise. All of my EOM positions were removed from the account. No problem there, except the VALUE was removed as well. In other words my net liquidating value was dropped by 30% in an instant and of course I get all kinds of deficiency popups and had to add more positions to deferred months to keep from getting auto liquidated. Had IB simply either left the positions in there OR given me the settled cash, there would not have been an issue. Why is it that they remove all the VALUE of these positions and drop your net liquidating number by such a drastic amount? Hopefully I will see the cash tomorrow.
We are still deficient this morning, although the overnight statement shows the proper value. I've started a ticket. Has anyone else had this happen? Is the message here from IB that you just need to manually close out all your ITM options before lunch on expiration day - before the autobot starts scanning? I understand not releasing margin or other staged closeout functions, but to remove the entire value of the positions from the account seems unconscionable.