For a couple minutes, my account was below the maintenance margin requirement. Perhaps they give me more leniency during day trades. In the past, they've sent me messages saying to add more money within 24 hours or I will be forced to sell.
Lets say you have a chunk of calls and are a big player. You'd trade off some losses by buying in order to have time (and volatility) on your side to get rid of them quickly.
Does 4x mean my maintenance requirement would go from $13,000 to $13000/4= $3250? Not even close to that low. I was only $2000 under on 6 contracts (maintenance = $78000).
%% VERY risky, but sounds like you broker considers you a good customer\ most margin agreements allow them to sell withOUT a notification.[SCHW discloses this] The billionaire that built AMTD[Ameritrade, bought by Dominion Bank], noted during bear of 20o8 or 2000 -2002\ he forced sold some accounts\ but did a FDX for some accounts\ requiring more margin money . Then he noted by the time they got FDX mail / did not need any more margin money /LOL But i dont think any has to notify you or any before forced sale
%% SCHW has enough banking sense/brokerage sense to value any customer. Same with IBKR. HOOD maybe, but i never got past that name RobinHood/RobberHood is what robin\robber hood means LOL
My understanding is, let's say you have $50k in your account, you can trade with 4x that, or $200k intraday. If your position surpasses this 4x value of your account due to losses, the position could be closed. That's the way I understand it, so if that is incorrect and your maintenance margin is referring to something totally different, I definitely need to understand it better myself.