I'm trying to short sell EXEL at $45.10 with a planned investment of $10,000. My IB account's AvailableFunds is $10,000, so I calculated the shares as: shares = int(10000 / 45.10) = 221 shares. However, the system rejected the order, stating that it exceeded THE INITIAL MARGIN. The IBAPI error message is: YOUR ORDER IS NOT ACCEPTED IN ORDER TO OBTAIN THE DESIRED POSITION YOUR EQUITY WITH LOAN VALUE [36033 USD] MUST EXCEED THE INITIAL MARGIN [64520.28 USD]. According to the IB Margin Requirements: Stock Margin Requirements | Interactive Brokers LLC https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/margin-stocks.php 30% × Market Value if stock price > $16.67 per share **$5.00 per share** if $5.00 < price ≤ $16.67 100% of Market Value if price ≤ $5.00 **$2.50 per share** if price ≤ $2.50 For EXEL at $45.10, the margin should be 30% × Market Value, but this doesn't match the error. When I manually tested with 100 shares, it seems I need **$28,000 in margin** to short 221 shares. Questions: How can I calculate the correct number of shares I can short? What's the exact Margin Requirements per share for EXEL? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Exel might have a higher req. often brokers do this on volatile names. perhaps ib raised the req ahead of earnings. my broker is requiring 100perxent.