Over the past few months, we've significantly enhanced our platform TWS for Desktop.
To Help Avoid Liquidation, TWS Considers Net Liquidating Value Uncertainty Due to After Hours Market Moves
At IB, our real-time margin system allows you to see your trading risk at any moment of the day. We apply margin requirements throughout the day and when necessary, liquidate positions instead of making delayed margin calls. This approach allows us to maintain our low commissions because it helps control the cost of credit losses.
We are starting the rollout of a new feature that will be of particular interest to our clients whose portfolios have some positions for which the market is open and others for which it is closed. This new system will value your portfolio using two different mark prices - real and forecasted. For the instruments that are open for trading, the two prices are identical and the same as today; i.e., they reflect the currently prevailing market prices. For the instruments that are closed for trading, the real mark price reflects the prevailing market prices and the forecasted one is an estimate based on correlated contracts that are currently trading in other markets.
You can see the forecasted mark prices for a particular instrument by mousing over its Market Price in the Portfolio Section of the Account Window (TWS version 957 and higher).
Your portfolio Net Liquidation Value (NLV) continues to be calculated using the real mark prices. The positions where the two mark prices differ contribute to the Net Liquidation Value Uncertainty, which is displayed in the Account Window (TWS version 957 and higher).
If the NLV Uncertainty is positive (i.e., your actual NLV may be lower than what is displayed in the Account Window), you may not be able to open some new positions. The aim is to prevent new positions that may need to be liquidated when the market reopens and the forecast mark prices get replaced with the real ones.
If the NLV Uncertainty is negative (i.e., your NLV may be higher than what is displayed in the Account Window), we may prevent auto-liquidation of positions in your account.
Adaptive Algo Supports Futures
The newest member of our IB Algo family, the Adaptive Algo, strives to achieve the fastest fill at the best all-in price by adapting to market conditions as it works. This flexible and popular algo can now also be used to trade futures, in addition to stocks and options. |