At IB the credit is immediately added to the account and is as well immediately available, as shown... IB updates the margin requirement realtime. Money never sleeps...
I might have to switch to IB. Anyhow, let's see how the real account operates for a while, I wouldn't be surprised if it was slower... ----------------------- In a completely unrelated news yesterday: "A comet with a death wish met a truly fiery end today (Aug. 4) when it was destroyed by the sun after diving toward the star at a truly jaw-dropping speed. It is one of the brightest sungrazing comet events in over two decades, one scientist says." http://www.space.com/33651-comet-death-dive-into-sun-video.html
Yes collected credit does show up immediately. However you can not use collected credit as margin for new trades until the the trade is over. I.e. close the trade or they expire.
Hmm. I don't know what you mean by "slower". The account opening at IB went straightforward, one just uploads 2 documents: scan of the national ID card (both sides seperately) and proof of the address (multiple choices here, I just used a bank statement, hid the irrelevant data on it). Funding went also fast (from Eur to US). One can transfer any currency listed on their website even if the account is different, for example USD acct. For clients from Euroland it makes sense to transfer EUR, because then an IBAN will be shown which simplifies the transfer. Otherwise if one transfers USD then full bank information will be shown, too much data to enter... Btw, initially we wanted to use the existing TD Ameritrade acct of my friend, but TD Ameritrade rejected to convert the cash account to a margin account b/c of my friend's residency in Germany... I wrote about it in a different thread here... So, the transferred funds went back again, and then we opened the IB account, and the rest is history...
The Paper Account (Sim-Account) of IB is different from the old Demo account. The Paper Acct is very realistic. Since Friday I'm trading live. And I don't need to talk anything with you, bye!
As I wrote, collected credit can immediately be used as margin for new trades. That's at least what I have myself experienced and made use of it on Friday. Here's proof that the account started with just about 10k (actually 9973): And these were all the trades (one can see that no position was closed yet):
Does that mean, that after you sold options, you margin increases & you can keep selling indefinitely?
Indefinitely for sure not! I guess one can use the proceeds from the short-sale maybe once, I have no idea, I'm new at IB... But your view of the margin is IMO flawed, because there is, with these type of trades, ie. short-selling, margin requirement to fullfil (ie. to bring) by the client. In my case I used also the proceeds from the short sale... As long as the system let's me do then IMO everything is ok I would say, after all the credit has become mine, although not yet guaranteed.
I am more interest to know what is your plan if the market gap up or down after close ? You did know that you will loss many times than your initial capital (10K) in this case ?