Opening both long and short trades

Interactive Brokers (and probably most other online stock brokers) do not allow one to open a long trade as well as a short trade on a stock independently. Example, you bought 1000 shares of stock XYZ at $10 and the stock drops tp $7 and you want to open a separate short trade of 1000 shares of the stock at $7 without closing the buy trade, you are not able to. Once you put in the short trade of 1000 shares at $7, IB treats it as you are closing the original long trade and thus close the trade for a loss of -$3 x 1000 shares. Is there a way to open the short trade without original long trade being closed (and vice versa), or anyone knows a broker that carry a huge list of US stocks like IB that allows what I am after? Thank you

 

We have not had this topic come up in along time. What is the purpose and using up cash with a debit balance on the long side and paying short stock fees on a boxed position, with no way to make money?

 

IMO your energy would be much better served being long a Star(s) and being short a Dog(s) simultaneously.

There is no worthwhile reason to be simultaneously long and short the same stock.

If you’re long 30K shares of XXX and you want to sell some OTM calls on XXX that’s another matter.

 

I've seen someone do something similar, effectively I might add, for a multitude of different reasons with futures(sometimes due to time issues / margin requirements and sometimes part of a strategy), so I understand generally where you're going with this.

Ninjatrader allows you to set up sub accounts which you can than take a short against your long position and also will potentially give you a partial margin credit as well. So, you'd have to contact a few brokers that do equities and see if they could set up a sub account on equities, that would be the way around it.

Not sure if there's some exact rule that doesn't allow you to do it on equities, but conceptually that's a way to do it.

 

1. Hold on to position and make no changes.
   
2. Add more shares at $7.
3. Close position.

I would do one of the above - in order of preference.

 

This is quite a good option

 

Hedging. Many opinions, one solution.
Not recommend

 

Don't forget to thank everyone for their recommendations on how you should be trading OP. Don't worry I doubt they'll be giving you any recommendations otherwise, put them on a live chart with a live account and you would hear dead silence.

 

The OP never discussed a legitimate hedge.

 

So, there's no one in the history of trading that has applied what the OP is talking about successful for any reason, even related to mental state, timing and/or margin?

That's impressive you can speak for every trade in the world.