self serving remark should have been left out of your response. you have a short fuse. it will not serve you well in trading.
Hi Bob, I put a trade on IB for a stock at 38 (atm roughly) a reverse Calendar spread and it seems to be using up abou $2000 of margin to my shock as maybe $70 max risk. I went into Etrade margin calculator and Open Calls Fed Call 0.00 -777.78 -777.78 House Call 0.00 -194.00 -194.00 Purchasing Power Marginable Securities 5.42 -3,892.54 -3,887.12 Non-Marginable Securities 5.42 -1,633.50 -1,628.08 Again maybe $70 risk but both brokers want arm and leg margin, even though a std cal sprd has just about the same risk and yet say $70 margin requirement. What would your firm require for margin on a $38x $38 rev cal sprd?
I assume this is a reg-t account and you sold the Longer dated option and bought the shorter dated option? Most brokers don’t recognize that as a full hedge in a reg-t account. I expect we are not much better. To get a real number, I need you to send the the exact spread with the cost of each leg to my email and I can have soMeone run that for me. I can only do PM as I know how to do that.