Spot forex in IB IRA acct?

Steve or Def? What say you?

I checked the IRA FAQ but could find no mention of Forex.

 

You could always quote the pair in IdealPRO and see what happens!

 

You may want to PM them or ask in the retail firm forum. I'm not sure how often those guys read this one.

 

Pjbreen,

That would be nice, wouldn't it, but, unfortunately, the answer is "no". I've already gone through that process. You will not be able to even add any spot forex pairs to your (single-account) TWS, because the IRA trading permissions don't allow spot forex.

For one thing, you need a margin, not cash, account to trade forex. As you can see from this Account Mgmt. - Trading Permissions screenshot, an IRA can only be set up as a cash account (note that the Margin radio button is grayed out):



I called IB a month or two ago to verify that one can't trade forex in an IRA with them.

However, strangely enough, you can trade futures in an IB IRA all you want, including CME GLOBEX currency futures.

 

Thanks all.

I thought there might be a margin problem. I knew you could trade futures as long as you always have overnight margin, you just don't get intrady margin.

Riskarb- IB acct. not open. rolling it from a schwab acct.

 

The IB IRA must be denominated in USD, is my understanding.

 

I understand that there are some currency ETFs slated to be released next year...leverage will suck but it is better than nothing

 

late apex is correct.
In our IRA accounts you can only trade US dollar denominated products, thus, you cannot trade Spot FX. I believe you can trade the currency futures.

 

Currency futures are not a problem on IRA. Customer should liquidate these contracts before expiration though to avoid a currency delivery or we will do it automatically.