I agree 100%. From IB's website: 1981 Efforts are made to code and test a system that identifies potential delta neutral trade pairs. Our greatest challenge: how to electronically read the prices of options as they are posted From 2000: On average, more than six percent of the daily global volume of exchange-traded equity options and equity futures is now traded across the Timber Hill/IB network. Hmmmmmm. Maybe I know why they were liquidated in that order....
I've used many brokers, but I would never use one I didn't trust to call and speak to me person-to-person <i>on the phone</i> before liquidating any of my positions. For me that's an absolute, but of course YMMV. I'm not a fan of being "auto-liquidated", possibly on the basis of (if OP is to be believed) datafeed misprints (!!).
OP, thanks for posting the detailed info. If those were your only positions, the liquidation is troubling for IB clients, of which I am one. I hope this is resolved in your favor.
Now you find out IB would do this eh?? I found this out long time ago, they can simply execute your order for whatever reason you LIKE, and do not compensate. Just move on, lesson learn. Find a broker who cares about customers. It is too big to fall(care for you ).
IB's implementation of auto-liquidation is very worrying. VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF) represents the whole United States stock market, and the low price was $0.15 on Thursday when its actual price is $57. I hope IB's algorithm is smart enough to filter out bad data points and not auto-liquidate in the case of VTI, but from this thread it appears that this may not be the case. I would like to hear from IB what it is doing to ensure that erroneous prices in an ETF such as VTI does not result in auto-liquidation.
After reading your positions held in the account, it is shocking to know how IB actually liquidated positions due to miscaculated margin call. I hope you will get this issue resolved with IB very soon. It seems not a single person got a decent fill when his/her positions are auto-liquidated. I am wondering what the reason behind this is to knowingly design a system that close a position very poorly for a customer. If the counter party is an entity from IB, is this against the law forbiding knowingly crossing an order with both parties known to a brokerage? Hope someone here will provide the answer.
Was there some other margined position you had that was so underwater it forced the liquidation of other stuff, namely your 119/114 SPY put spread? If that was the case, then the problem comes down to a program that doesn't know how to close a spread properly. Otherwise, we're still left with the mystery of why you were liquidated at all.