I have not smoked herb in many years but if i can get my hands on what this guy is toking I'm willing to come out of retirement!!!
They do disclose each account separately, on your daily statement. By default, in the commodities account there is only the minimum necessary for the futures margin, but also you can customize this option if you want another way.
Ok, all panicky-guys out there, stop ventilating for a second and think: how the hell do you think a brokerage firm gets a credit line to obtain funds so that a client can leverage up his account? They have to post a collateral, a guarantee, and that will have to come from the asset the client just bought. Or does anyone think IB would get funding at Fed funds + 30bps for large million USD via unsecured lending? Stop dreaming...
In this case, out of this $100 cash, $50 bucks is already pledged as margin for the option position. Call it whatever you want, re-hypo-whatever, but until that position is closed that money officially isn't yours. Just like your house in a mortgage.
Non-sense talk. A futures is just a contract, it never requires to re-hypothecate anything. And I don't get the "Why the need to rehypothecate customer funds 3 or 4 times to build their own portfolio?" Makes no sense at all in IB or any other broker I met, even MF Global.
From the clauses it looks like MF Global wants to pledge your assets without posting any collateral in substitute, which is very different from lending out a stock against cash as collateral.