Upgraded from cash to margin account. Question!

Hi there,

I hope you guys can help me with this one because I can’t figure it out.

I recently upgraded my IBKR EUR cash account to a margin account. I currently have about 55.000 euro’s worth of US stocks, 6.000 euro’s worth of US dollars cash and I own 4 (long) M6E EUR/USD futures contracts to hedge my currency risk (I am eurozone based).

So 55.000 + 6.000 makes 61.000 in assets. With a reg T margin account I should be getting twice the buying power right? (for overnight anyway). So 122.000. But IBKR says I only have a buying power of 27.600. How is that possible? I don’t get it.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

https://ibkr.info/node/2085/

 

Margin Requirement on your M6E's overnight ??

You only get 2x's on Stock, margin remains the same for your M6E's I think.

 

Maintenance margin on my 4 M6E’s is only €1500.

So I should be getting 61.000 in assets x 2 - 1500 = 120.500

 

Thanks for the reply. I read that page. What part are you specifically referring to? Because everything I read on there confirms my case. Am I missing something?

 

I sent the page because is what we should refer to, but you are right, it doesn't seem to prove why you are getting that buying power. I believe it is going to get down to the margin required to have those positions and contracts opened and related to your leverage.
If you have any way to break down every contract into their required individual margin you should see the total sum and find out why you are getting that number.

 

Thank you for the help angrytrader. But my portfolio consist only of 10 stocks and the 4 EUR/USD futures contracts which only have a margin maintenance of 1.500 eur, so this is still a mystery.

And IBKR customer service doesn’t respond to my tickets and their chat is a hell. Great...

 

Anyone else any ideas?

 

Hoping it would recalc over or night.

Recently sold positions have released the money, pre margin, wash sale rule is it ??

 

Overnight didn’t help. Even several overnights not. And yes recently I have sold some positions and bought some other but it didn’t help.

Anytime I sold something my buying power went up something like 4 times the cash I got from selling but when I bought another stock it dropped with cash one on one. Very strange this. Does IBKR give you only margin on certain large cap/high volume stock and not the small/micro cap I tend to buy?