For all you folks out there trading E-Minis with EFS and IB, here is a small lesson learnt from margin with IB. I am not sure if I am the last person to learn this, but I thought I would post it just in case.
I trade the ES E-Mini. I am starting out small, $2800, and I need to know the margin requirements at IB. So I look it up . . .
Intra-Day Initial = $2000
Intra-Day Maint = $1600
Inter-Day Initial = $4000
Inter-Day Maint = $3200
Yesterday I fire up the program around 2 PM, all trades work well, this morning it wants to trade at 9 AM, all fails???? So I am wondering, what is the deal . . .
After some descriptions of the problem with IB, since I KNOW my code works just fine, here is what I learnt:
All orders placed between market hours subscribe to INTRA day margin rules, and those outside subscribe to INTER day margin rules. The best part is, that if your account is long or short at 15:45 EST, then you will automatically be sold out if you do not have over night margin requirements.
I am not sure if this will help anyone, but it certainly helped me understand why things are the way they are. It is not like IB has a manual for this.
Regards,
Thomas
I trade the ES E-Mini. I am starting out small, $2800, and I need to know the margin requirements at IB. So I look it up . . .
Intra-Day Initial = $2000
Intra-Day Maint = $1600
Inter-Day Initial = $4000
Inter-Day Maint = $3200
Yesterday I fire up the program around 2 PM, all trades work well, this morning it wants to trade at 9 AM, all fails???? So I am wondering, what is the deal . . .
After some descriptions of the problem with IB, since I KNOW my code works just fine, here is what I learnt:
All orders placed between market hours subscribe to INTRA day margin rules, and those outside subscribe to INTER day margin rules. The best part is, that if your account is long or short at 15:45 EST, then you will automatically be sold out if you do not have over night margin requirements.
I am not sure if this will help anyone, but it certainly helped me understand why things are the way they are. It is not like IB has a manual for this.
Regards,
Thomas
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