# Placing Iron condor with IB with cash account



## Hung004 (10 June 2017)

Hi,

Was wondering if you can place an Iron condor on interactive brokers TWS platform.
I have a cash account (only cash account allowed) and I can place it using the paper trading account.
But as soon as I tried to place it in my live account it says "No trading permisson"
I wanted to trade the US option "IWM" on the upcomming months options (july 2017)

on IB's margin requirements page it got the follow for an iron condor:
*Margin*
     Initial/RegT End of Day Margin    Short Put Strike - Long Put Strike
     Maintenance Margin                    Same as Initial
*Cash or IRA Cash *                        If all options are European and cash-settled, same as                                                                  margin account.
*IRA Margin *                                   Same as Margin Account


Has anyone got experience with Iron condor on a cash account with IB?
Does it have to be "European and cash-settled"?
Not sure what "same as margin" means
Is it possible?
I tried calling IB and the lady just says: if you can trade using paper account you can also with live account. I don't think this is true


----------



## cutz (10 June 2017)

Do you have Trade Permission for United States stocks and options ticked off ? This is found in Account Management under Trade Configuration.


----------



## Hung004 (11 June 2017)

Account management in IB website is showing blank page for me When I log in. Can u check yours to see if it's doing the same?


----------



## cutz (11 June 2017)

Hi.

Good today.


----------



## Hung004 (15 June 2017)

I got my permissions sorted.
Now when I place a live Iron Condor on IWM I get 
"THIS ACCOUNT MAY NOT HOLD POSITIONS: SHORT CALL"
there got to be a way around this.

European style options? anyone has experience with this?

I heard that if you have a company trust with IB then you can have margin.
But not sure what are the requirements are around this?


----------



## jackrab (20 June 2017)

Hung004 said:


> I got my permissions sorted.
> Now when I place a live Iron Condor on IWM I get
> "THIS ACCOUNT MAY NOT HOLD POSITIONS: SHORT CALL"
> there got to be a way around this.
> ...




I think with European style options you can short calls in a spread, since that would be cash-covered with a limited loss. And then only if exercise/assignment results in cash delivery and not the underlying. 

The reason you can't hold short American style options at all (not even in a spread), is that you might be assigned before expiry and be liable to a margin call etcetc... Which is BS in the end... because you should be covered with a limited loss in a spread anyway....

You need to be a company to be able to get a margin account. Individuals can't have one, as per rules from ASIC... which sucks. When you do go this way, you will pay more for data, since you will be viewed as a professional trader by IB.


----------

