Xfanman

Kelly, if you don't mind spending the wire fee I find that the fastest way to move money. IB credited my wire almost immediately after I sent it.

Kelly, first of all I'm no expert, but as I understand it being labeled as a PDT is a SEC rule not an IRS treatment. The IRS classifies your trades as long term or short term but the PDT is to (allegedly) keep smaller traders from blowing up their accounts day trading. Usually the broker will freeze your account and put you in the penalty box for 90 days and not allow you to trade (except to close your existing positions) unless you meet the PDT margin call and deposit enough in your account to have more than 25k OR you wait our your time and they reset you after 90 days. Here is IB's statement on PDT --> Overview: The FINRA and NYSE instituted regulations intended to limit the amount of trading that can be done in accounts with small amounts of capital, specifically accounts with less than 25,000 USD Net Liquidation Value. A Pattern Day Trader is someone who effects 4 or more day trades within a 5 business day period. You have violated these rules and are therefore subject to PDT restrictions. Background: According to the governing bodies, you are now disallowed to initiate any new positions (though you can always close out preexisting positions) for a period of 90 days. You do have options which are: a) Deposit funds into the account which bring the account value greater than USD 25,000. Accounts valued greater than USD 25,000 are allowed unlimited day trades. Create a web ticket through Account Management, requesting that IB reset your PDT status. The subject of the ticket should be PDT Reset. Once the ticket is sent to IB, a representative will reply with a letter that contains instructions on what you need to do. Respond to this with corresponding answers if you wish to reset, and IB will review each case individually. In general, an account is allowed one reset in a 180 day period, and a maximum of 2 resets in a rolling calendar year. Also, here's a link to the IRS treatment of Traders where it states that Trader or Daytrader has no meaning to the IRS --> http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc429.html

Yes, or you can use the "Close Position" feature by right clicking on the Straddle and selecting Trade/Close Position and following it from there.

I've seen Kim state that but haven't tried it. I wonder if I can do that in Mosaic? I'll play around with it later thanks.

Kelly, If you click specifically on the BID or ASK price (on the option chain line) while building your Combo it will populate the Buy and Sell side automatically for both the Put and Call legs. As for you running afoul of the PDT rules I don't know what IB will do but OptionsHouse would let you close out any position you had entered into. I would hope IB would be the same way but I'd call them as soon as you can to make sure. Also, as you probably already know, each opening and closing of a leg of a spread counts as a round trip transaction as far as PDT is concerned so you could feasibly exceed the PDT rules by entering and existing just one IC on the same day Maybe IB will cut you some slack since you got out of the trade right away but I wouldn't count on it....Good Luck.

Well I have used the Close Position selection before but somehow didn't manage to sell everything so I must be doing "something" right Just to be safe I sold 1 contract of DELL first just to make certain it had the desired results, then I sold half of that position successfully. I STILL don't know what's different about this order than all the other ones I've done but as long as the pop ups remain accurate I should be ok. I did update the platform this morning I wonder if they changed something...I'll have to go check the change log to see. Thanks for your help.....Scott

Thanks Marco, that's how I usually enter an order also when I'm purchasing a Combo. Do you do the same thing to sell that combo or do you use Close Position or something else? Thanks again...Scott

Ok I see part of the problem, the DELL order is a Negative # and the HPQ is a Positive. Why they were loaded separately I don't know. Also, when I change the DELL order to a positive number it doesn't change the BUY/SELL pop up information. What's the best "easiest" way you other IB users preload orders in IB?

Now I'm REALLY confused. I've been doing pretty well with IB and then this morning I go to put in a LMT order for DELL to close the position and my order screen says BUY to Close. I've already got a LMT order in to close HPQ and it says SELL to Close. When the pop up comes up when I hover over the orders DELL has a blue BUY tab and says "To Buy 1 Straddle means SELL and to SELL 1 Straddle means BUY. HPQ has a red SELL tab (which is what my order screen normally does) and says "To BUY 1 Straddle means BUY and to SELL 1 Straddle means SELL". Any idea why I'd have opposite behaviors on the same Order screen for 2 different order tickets? I did create the DELL ticket in Options Trader because my existing Straddle didn't show up on my drop down tab today. I created the HPQ order via the drop down. Very confusing...thanks...Scott

To answer your question regarding closing your position it would have to be the Friday after your purchase (Day 2) if you're able to hold until Tuesday. You wouldn't be able to hold until the Tuesday after the following Friday (Day 8) as your Options would have expired.

I'll help with AMZN and GOOG. The only date that may be a problem for me is the 4th week but we'll see when we get nearer. Thanks -- Scott

I misspoke, it's not that they don't sell orders off multiple exchanges, it's that IB "combines" legs off different exchanges and (Options House at least) doesn't do that. Your spread has to be opened or closed on ONE exchange or it doesn't fill.

When you select IBM it should give you a menu that lists --> Stock Futures Options Option Chain & Combo Builder Does yours not have the last menu item?

That's why I switched from OptionsHouse. Any broker that is trying to fill orders off one exchange is not going to do as well as IB when they are getting you the best fill off multiple exchanges.

On the iPhone (which I would think would be damn near the same) from the Main Menu select Order Ticket, type in your underlying, then select Option Chain & Combo Builder and go from there.

I've heard a number of people complain about cancellation fees in IB and I got hit with my first one the other day. What I may have stumbled on though is yesterday instead of cancelling an order I had that I knew I didn't want to take the trade on I simply changed my order to DAY and put a really low Limit amount on it knowing it wouldn't get filled (and if it did at that price good for me). Anyway, no cancellation charge today as it just cleared their system last night. I have no data other than this one experience to say if this will work every time or not but it appears to have worked for me this one time and I'll try it again when I need to cancel something in the future. Just an FYI.

Someone mentioned the Options Rollover screen on IB the other day and I pulled it up this morning to look at Rolling the SPY put to next week. It looks pretty handy if you have a lot of positions and need to sort them out. If you use IB and haven't looked at it it's under the Advanced Tools/More Advanced Tools/Rollover Options.

Mark sounds like a great addition Kim. Welcome Mark!

Anyone using a screen setup they really like on IB for either Mosaic (which I'm currently using) or the regular TWS front end? I'm playing around with different screen setups but if you have something that works nicely for you that you wouldn't mind sharing I (and maybe others) would love to see it! Thanks -- Scott

What I'm learning is that I need to setup trades ahead of time with a good limit order after Kim expresses his intention of getting into a trade. My hesitation up to this point has been some of the later trade discussions will sometimes bring up legitimate reasons NOT to take that particular trade. I'm probably erring on the side of caution however and most of the time this is noted early in a thread. Like many of you, I'm not always at my desk ready to enter an order when I happen to get Kim's alert and often times it's too late when I can get to it (or as evidenced by my rushed CSCO trade which through dumb luck ended well for me).

I'm hit and miss Bill. It's been a lot better since I moved an account to IB. If I'm not quick enough though and the price is moving I end up missing trades too. I'll just set a limit order around Kim's price and hope it comes back down. I think part of the reason we miss some at Kim's fill price is he sets up a favorable limit order ahead of time and if the price dips for a minute or two he gets a fill and reports it and it's already moved back up for the rest of us that aren't pre-loaded with the same limit orders. Of course we can sometimes get in later at a better price than he did so I'm not complaining

So I really screwed the pooch today when I got the CSCO trade alert while on the road and I jumped on my iPad to enter the trade. I'm getting better with IB on my desktop but haven't used the mobile apps too much yet. I entered the straddle and adjusted the number of contracts to what I "thought" was my correct position size. I hit BUY and the confirmation window pops up but there is NO net total value of the trade?? The desktop platform gives you the transaction value but the mobile app for some reason does not. I push confirm because now I'm finishing up in my shrinks office while she's waiting for me and boom...I've just bought 10 times the number of contracts of CSCO I intended too buy!! Apparently there's a position size multiplier on IB that I have set at 10 ( I'm guessing at this point because I just got home and haven't confirmed this yet) and instead of buying 20 contracts ( 10 of ea side) I ended up buying 200. I'll see where the trade is tomorrow but this is too large of a position for my comfort level in this one trade. Whoops

Something I'm learning to appreciate on IB that OH doesn't have is the ability to watch a combo order (IC, RIC, Straddle, Strangle etc) on a chart with my limit order price displayed on the chart. It's a great visual aid to be able to pull these charts up and get a quick snapshot of where the trade is at and if it's approaching my target without having to refer back to notes or dig deeper into the platform. Although I could quickly tell whether a position was positive or negative on OH, having my target automatically included on a graph showing the actual combo price instead of just the underlying is REALLY nice!

I don't believe IB uses a Flat Rate for Options only Stocks, ETF's and Warrants according to their Fee Schedule. You can see their Fee Schedule here --> http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=commission

Glad I could help!