Does anyone know what haircut IB applies to Canadian treasury bills? If I recall correctly it is 1 or 2 percent for US treasury bills, meaning, 98 or 99 percent can be used as collateral/ available capital to trade. I cannot find any information how much IB assesses for Canadian treasury bills? I want to enrich my yield by parking my cash in Canadian t-bills but use a majority as collateral for general trading. Anyone know?
No, it does not show that to my knowledge. There is no concept of margin for bonds. Bonds are paid up fully in cash, at least at IB. And I have not seen any metric that points to whether a tbill can be used as collateral. I just know how IB treats US tbills. Even a chat with the products desk at IB revealed they did not know.
Even their fx rollovers are not published on a single page, you have to stich them together looking at margin charges on one site and excess cash tables on another and guess and make assumptions about markups. We have been with IB almost from the beginning but recently hardly see any further improvement in their platform or services. Only pandering to the new age crowd to make a quick buck and grab market share. This is NOT how Peterffy built his business. Since he left his CEO duties things have almost grinded to a halt in terms of improvements. Nowadays everything is geared towards the mass market. Customer reps don't pay attention to listen carefully even to larger account holders, something we have not experienced before.
Is it still owned by management? Peterffy said that was one of the major benefits of the ownership structure to ensure it stays relevant.
I go by what management does not what it says. A recent address change at IB was a nightmare. We were passed from one rep to another and never had direct access to any personnel in compliance. Uploaded documents and proof of new address was not carefully evaluated and it took almost 2 months to get this done and approved. That's not how a company treats clients it claims it values.
I don't understand the difference between "can be used as collateral" and "marginable". Your question implies that you think the two concepts are different. I assume you refer to securities when you say "collateral". I once had a similar question regarding whether T-bills can be used as futures collateral. The answer is "yes", but to my knowledge IB does nowhere mention that on any help page or anywhere. The collateral percentages depend on the maturity of the T-bill, I think around 96% to 98%. Getting this kind of information from IB is like pulling teeth. I once had another question as to whether German or Japanese government bonds can be used as futures collateral for EUREX or Japanese traded futures. IB was not able to tell me. Please let me know if anybody in this forum knows. In a high interest rate environment, it would make a difference if you have high futures margin, as cash collateral earns no interest