.....I have to be honest with you.....I would NEVER approve anyone to actively trade options unless they had a LIQ. Net worth of at least 100k.....if you can't come up with 25k , why in the world would any firm allow you to actively trade options with less? I have approved hundreds of Option accounts in my life and can honestly say I would shut you down....I also think that the firm you are using is using house rules to restrict your account.....The problem is not the SEC ....the problem is the small investors who lose $$, call up the attorney on day time TV and sue the crap our of everybody.....based on the information you have provided just in this chat room, i would say you are not suitable for Options trading....You don't have sufficient net worth, or liquid net worth and I would also reject you based on experience.....I would restrict you to covered call writing and put purchases only and would probably shut down your account if you did more then 5 option trades per month....This is known as the "suitability requirement" and is part of the " know your customer" rules.....Believe it or not, NASD firms have a duty to protect you form yourself. In one case i was involved in the nasd arbitrator actually said " You had a DUTY to protect this client from committing financial suicide"....and then we had to pay big$$ to a client who traded unsolicited stocks and option trades....does that seem right to you?
Clearly you still haven't gotten over your bitterness from your own past experiences. In that way you aren't very different from qdz and his vendetta against IB. Except that qdz's gripe actually was with IB, whereas your gripe was not with me, and you are merely lumping me with those you are bitter about, and directing your lingering anger toward them onto me. Fortunately for me, I am not applying to you or your firm. I don't really care whether you would approve me or approve of me or anything else. And for your information I stopped trading options months ago, and don't particularly intend to ever trade them again, because options are a sucker game anyhow. I do thank the PDT rules, to a degree, for guaranteeing my departure from the sucker game of the options table. My points about how the PDT rules are applied may be IB's House Rules, but IB has stated that their application of the rules are as they were told by the S.E.C. the rules must be applied.
For your own past personal experiences to so cloud your vision that you have to make these accusatory condescending remarks toward me while completely failing to follow my plainly spelled out points of logic, is as misguided as qdz's ongoing vendetta against IB because one incident that took place 6 months ago. In fact, you're behaving worse (can you believe it?) than qdz, because at least qdz in his ongoing gripe is directing his bitterness toward the party which did in fact give him his original grievance. Whereas I had nothing to do with the situation you are griping about. My vision is not clouded.....you simply DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE SECURITIES INDUSTRY!.....follow the bouncing ball and see if you can grasp this: options are not marginable......and UNLESS YOU SPECIFICALLY GIVE INSTRUCTIONS TO YOUR CLEARING FIRM TO EXERCISE, YOU HAVE NO STOCK NOR ANY RIGHTS TO PROXY VOTE ON THE STOCK, MARGIN OR ANYTHING ELSE......why?....imagin this: a hostile takeover is on the table for DELL to take over INTEL......the dell guy want s to control as many votes as possible so he goes out and buys every single INTEL call available.......You could control a company for a fraction of the price...thus, unless it's exercised it has NO VALUE if you have 1 million....and you buy 975k in option contracts...your account will reflect 25k in cash and in most cases .01 as a min value on all the option contracts......like wise if you LEASE a car and a home loan asks you for the approximate value of the car you own, you should reply "0" ...because you don't own it.....If somebody asks you homemuch your house is worth , you can say One-Million....does that make you a millionaire....not if you owe the bank 800k on the loan for it......so once again : when you buy an option you receive NO EQUITY value for it so in effect you have only the 25k left and would be subject to the rule and rightly so. ....and I would suggest you STOP trying to use "logic" with the securities industry....and especially with the stock market..
If you lease a car, and a homeloan asks you the value of your car, you should say $0.00, because you don't own it. I understand that. However, having done that, the homeloan people have no business presuming to tell you how much or how far or how often you can drive that car which you are leasing. That's between you and the car rental. That's the point I've been trying to make to you. I used your analogy to try to make that point clear to you. Either you will understand it, or you won't.
I can' t argue with you there.....because i have no idea what you are talking about!!!....Let me give you a few more rules that you probably don't know about......You cannot open amargin account with less then 2k...
No, I was well aware that you can't open a margin account with less than $2,000. I was simply trying to make one single point about options and the PDT rules, and you have not been able to grasp that point no matter how many times or how simply or how many ways I have tried to rephrase it so that you might grasp it. I even used the analogy which you yourself created, hoping that you might at least get the picture if I used your own analogy to make the point clear. But no luck there either. The point is still there, in the posts I have already written, in case you ever decide you actually care to understand what the point I was trying to make was. If you go back and slooooowly and carefully re-read them I still have a glimmer of faith that you may be able to finally realize the point I have been futilely trying to get across to you. May I ask you one simple direct question: "Do you yourself actually ever buy stock options to trade?" Thank you.
Not anymore....Please don't patronize me son....I have forgotten more rules and regulations then you will ever know and if you must know, I have been a SROP and CROP at numerous firms....listen carefully: I UNDERSTAND YOUR FRUSTRATION AND POINT.....what I am trying to explain to you is that there are many many rules and regulations that may or may not make sense to the common investor....truthfully, they are sometimes very ambiguous, like the '5% guideline"....it's quoted in he NASD manual as " it's a guideline not a rule"....however if you charge more then 5% ...the regulators will spank you for Violating the rule .......The reason I pointed outthe 2k margin rule was that with any ruel or regulation you can take the stance of " who are they tot tell me I have to have a large margin"...i wish you luck and try not to get to stressed
I was not trying to patronize you. I asked if you actually trade options because of your seeming complete inability to understand the point I was trying to make. I believe your lack of understanding of the point I was trying to make was due to the fact that you probably have not traded options since October 15 2002, when they began being subjected to the PDT rules. p.s. please don't try to patronize me, "dad".
You are current in that assumption, but you keep missing my point which is that no sensible, and ethical ROP in the country would EVER approve you or ANYONE for active option trading without a minimum of 50-75k LIQ net worth....let alone 25k...
And you persist in missing the original point that brought you into this whole discussion, which was that no matter how much money is in the damn account (forget about little ol' me, for the moment, this applies to everyone), at least it is the case at IB, if you (however much experience and net worth you may have) purchase enough options so that there remains less than $25,000 cash in the account after the options, that account . . . oh, why do I bother