IB has zero liquidity issues, not even close. Our risk management systems are real time and uncompromising. If your account is deficient, we liquidate immediately. Period. It is a core part of our philosophy that we will not endanger one client by allowing others to take excessive risk. We don't invest or participate in the market segments that have proved so costly to many investors and financial market participants. We own exactly zero CDO, CMO, CDS, or any other flavor of mortgage derivative; zero debt swaps, etc. We use short term FX rolls for treasury purposes and that is the only OTC transaction in our portfolio. Our business is solid, and steadily growing. We are not doing anything that will compromise our reputation as a safe and conservative broker one iota. Nor will we. The message you got from the compliance department is certainly related to the details of your specific account or activities therein. When a regulator makes an inquiry to certain activities, it is normal to restrict further activity in the account pending the results of the investigation. It is also common that the regulators prohibit us from discussing the nature of their investigation. I am not saying that is what happened in this case; I am merely providing a use case for situations where accounts can be frozen. If you feel a FINRA involvement is appropriate, I strongly encourage you to pursue the issue with them.
Might be a customer service issue rather than liquidity. My IB account was froze once, without warning. I found out about it when I tried to place a trade. They froze it due to my country of origin. Then it took them a long time to get it unfrozen, and they were slow to respond to email inquiries. It took 10 days to get a response, but they responded and unfroze my account after I made a complaint in their ticket system.
Morbid curiosity. Do the frozen accounts concern more or less than $25,000 each? Is there any chance that Feds of one stripe or another are involved? What type of account is this - regular margin account, IRA, etc? How experienced are you in dealing with brokerages.
Dude, you should be VERY CAREFUL, your accusation is rumor spreading. I hope they get you by the balls because what you say is absolute BS, it may be frozen because you may have done any sort of BS but its not for illiquidity.
GOOD, at least they now have your address so they can check out whether you are really spreading rumors or just too dumb to maintain your account open, maybe you lost so much you fell below the minimum amount to maintain your account, loser!!!
Give the guy a break . You don't know his situation and are fretting over possible trouble at IB. He's just another customer pissed off at IB's arrogance and lack of respect for their customer's time. Barring fraud in that customer's account I am sure IB has a reason for doing this ( a good one or an idiotic one) but as all too often just failed to communicate appropriately .
No wonder you call yourself a pig. So you withdrew money. Good for you. That doesn't change the fact that my account has been frozen for over 2 weeks, that I KNOW nothing wrong was done in my side (I have been trading with IB for 6 years and I know something about trading), that I cannot get IB to explain to me what the situation is (and I have been trying in any possible way for the last 2 weeks), that they are treating customers like a mafia and not like a broker, and that you all should be worried if you have an account with them.