I am curious what kind of margin they give portfolio accounts. Can't get a straight answer out of them because they always change it based on how risky they judge a stock to be, and how spread out your position is. Is anyone doing this on a daily basis, going in an out of single stocks? Trying to see if they generally offer 6:1.
For some stocks they require higher margins, but for most large cap stocks it is 6:1. I think the margin is also higher if you concentrate everything in a few stocks. You can test it out in paper trading first.
I have PM. Trading AAPL only (no other positions), for example, it required 20% for initial margin. I believe it's 30% for shorts. You can use order entry to see what the requirement will be for the order.
That is high for PM as the OCC require 15% and we require 15% for DT and 18% overnight for accounts under $5mm.
That's what I'm seeing in my order preview window. IB requires higher margin for something like your largest five positions (I forget the exact number).
It varies greatly. It can be 10:1 or more on low volatility ETFs, 6:1 for large caps, 1:1 for most biotechs and for quite a few with over 1bln cap less than 1:1. Last week I experienced liquidation with just over 1.3:1 margin, 6 equities and nothing with a cap below 1bln.
Right, the platform is showing me 15% Margin, but the Rep. said that that's the "up to" not what their algorithm will allow.
That sucks ... I believe they have some formula which they suggest to follow to avoid liquidation. Did you not follow it intentionally or just got a hair over it unintentionally? Just curious because for some strategies it's not a big deal, but for some it would be pretty bad.