I never have positions auto-liquidated, ever (affects spread, commission and exposure adversely)
Preview margin implications before you submit a trade
Daily Margin Reports
Futures
Reg. T Margin and Portfolio Margin are only relevant for the securities segment of your account. Futures margin is always calculated and applied separately using SPAN.
Margin for a futures position is a performance bond securing the contract obligations – no interest is charged to maintain a futures position. Margin for futures is a cash or cash equivalent deposit that can earn interest while it works for you.
If you enter a commodities trade, cash will be moved from the Securities segment to the Commodities segment in order to facilitate the trade. This will cause your SMA to drop accordingly. Only the funds resting in your IBKR Universal Account’s Securities segment are included in SMA.
Once the contract is closed and the margin requirement is released from any statutory hold period, you can have the settled cash swept back to the Securities segment by selecting “Sweep to Securities” for your account’s Excess Funds Sweep setting.
Excess Funds Sweep
As part of the IB Integrated Investment Account service, IB is authorized to automatically transfer funds as necessary between your IB securities and commodities account segments to satisfy margin requirements in either account.
You can configure how you want IB to handle the transfer of excess funds using a feature called Excess Funds Sweep in our Account Management system. If you choose not to sweep excess funds, funds will not be swept except to meet margin requirements.
Definitions
- Look Ahead margin shows the change in margin values based on the next period change (End of trading session, start of trading session).
- Post-Expiry Margin @ Open (predicted) & Post-Excess (predicted) provides projected “at expiration” values based on the soon-to-expire contracts in your portfolio. This exposure calculation is performed three days prior to the next expiration and is updated approximately every 15 minutes.
What can cause my positions to be liquidated in a Reg T Margin account?
Anything that places your account in a margin deficit:
- Your Margin Cushion (Excess Liquidity) is equal to or less than zero.
- Your SMA balance is less than zero at 350pm (10m before the end of the trading day).
- Your account doesn’t have enough equity to receive or deliver post-option expiration positions. Given that the OCC processes the exercise and assignment after the expiration Friday close, liquidations in USD equities usually occur shortly after the open of regular trading hours (09:30 EST) on Monday or the next trading day. Any positions could be liquidated as a result of your account being in margin violation—the liquidation is not confined to only the shares that resulted from the option position.
- Pre expiry liquidations: To protect against these scenarios as expiration nears, IB will evaluate the exposure of each account assuming stock delivery. If the exposure is deemed excessive, IB will:
- Liquidate options prior to expiration; or
- Allow the options to lapse; and/or
- Allow delivery and then liquidate the underlying. In addition, the account may be restricted from opening new positions to prevent an increase in exposure.
Futures
- To avoid deliveries of expiring futures contracts as well as those resulting from futures options contracts, customers must roll forward or close out positions prior to the Start of the Close-Out Period. If a position exists at the Start of the Close-Out Period, the account becomes subject to an IB-generated liquidation trade. The liquidation trade will occur at some point between the Start of the Close-Out Period and the respective Cutoff.