Interactive Brokers

Sharkman · 4 April 2020

cutz said:
Hi Again.

Combo quotes the MM's post are invisible to "Chess" brokers ( Aussie big 4 ?), I can sort of understand what you're describing ie, one let get hit then the other leg simultaneously get hit .. Doesn't quite work that way. I can best describe as being their own seperate series, makes more sense when you see it live on TWS, maybe check it out with a months data.

BTW call verticals are pretty juicy at the moment, getting hit hard with falling vols.

thanks for the insights, that's probably what i was missing. in normal times i mainly trade covered calls and cash covered puts, not a whole lot of combos, so not familiar with the finer details of it. i was trading them similar to singular options - i took the combined mid based on what i was seeing on my CHESS broker screen, started several ticks my side of the spread, then kept moving it in a tick or two every few seconds until it got filled or i didn't want to cross any more of the spread.

still testing the waters a bit at the moment, trying to get more of a feel for how the market is behaving in the current climate, as it is obviously different now than it was a few months ago, and from what i've seen so far, selling call verticals and call diagonals seem to be the right plays for me here.

yep both delta skew and time skew look really steep at the moment, i've been dabbling with call diagonals over the last few weeks (on individual stocks not the index). bought some Jun 25-30'ish delta calls at around 40-50 IV and been selling ATM weeklies against them at IVs in the 75-90 range. short dated vols do seem to have fallen off slightly lately (back to around 70'ish last thurs) but the skew is still massive and now that i have those long calls "on the house", will look to keep selling ATM weeklies against it on days when we get one of those dead cat bounces.

Sharkman · 4 April 2020

bellenuit said:
What do you do for US shares and options, assuming you trade these? I used to my trading under my personal account with IB and paid for live market data which cost me just over AUD 20 a month. I've now moved all my trading to a Family Trust account with them and closed the personal account. However, a FT is treated as a professional and the fees are about $200+ per month. Far too much for the volume I do. I can get the realtime Share data from Yahoo, but I can't seem to find a reasonably priced source for the Options data.

i don't trade US options or US shares directly - my only US exposure is an S&P 500 ETF. it's not that i think they are bad or anything, i'd like to trade them if it was practical, but getting the proper amount of sleep at the proper time is more important to me.

my IB account is a corporate trust account so it would get hit with the hefty professional level fees as well. i get the live data for free thru the CHESS broker where i keep the long term investment component of my portfolio, it's a setup that works pretty well for me, like i said above i keep that open on one screen and TWS open on the other when i'm trading. but as i just learned from cutz, that may not be showing the full picture when looking at option combos.

waterbottle · 5 April 2020

cutz said:
I don't trade fx but just checked fx futures are available.

With regards to margin I think you're referring to limited 'margin loans", not related to margin.

Yes, in relation to the 25k limit on retail margin accounts.
Are you restricted to trading futures contracts that are less than/equal to 25k or is the 25k the maximum loanable value for initial+maintenance margin?

Cheers

cutz · 5 April 2020

waterbottle said:
Yes, in relation to the 25k limit on retail margin accounts.
Are you restricted to trading futures contracts that are less than/equal to 25k or is the 25k the maximum loanable value for initial+maintenance margin?

Cheers

Hello,

It appears you are referring to two different scenarios, the new 25K facility as far as I know is the ability to borrow up to 25K cash to fund stock purchase.

For SPI futures margining please refer to website data here
https://www.interactivebrokers.com....ex=au&rgt=0&rsk=1&pm=0&rst=040404010101080101

Regards.

freebird54 · 5 April 2020

I have found the MM sadly missing lately or when there massive spreads - I only sell calls an puts.

cutz · 5 April 2020

freebird54 said:
I have found the MM sadly missing lately or when there massive spreads - I only sell calls an puts.

Hello.

True, although you should be getting hit around the mid ?

Sharkman · 5 April 2020

freebird54 said:
I have found the MM sadly missing lately or when there massive spreads - I only sell calls an puts.

what underlyings are you trading? much to my surprise, i have found the complete opposite so far, though i have been restricting myself to options over the top 20 large caps, as i normally do. the volumes on the spreads they are showing the market are definitely down, but that's not been an issue for me so far as i'd rather trade less contracts than i normally would in this climate anyway.

i stayed out of it for the first couple of weeks after the plunge started, thinking the market would be untradeable. then i sold 2 BHP OTM puts, just to test the waters with a trivial number of contracts and to top up my holding to a round number if assigned, and ended up getting filled at 1.19 on a 0.80/1.59 spread. which signalled to me that the MMs are still willing to deal, just not as many contracts as they would have previously. have done a few more trades since then and all have been fairly close to the mid despite the wide spreads and super high vols.

cutz · 6 April 2020

Ha ha,

Looks like I could be eating my words !! Market makers aren't showing me a counteroffer on my 4 leg combo !!

Sharkman · 6 April 2020

cutz said:
Ha ha,

Looks like I could be eating my words !! Market makers aren't showing me a counteroffer on my 4 leg combo !!

harder to get a fill early on in a session from my experience, even on single option covered call and cash covered put trades. i've always tended to have better luck getting decent fills nearer to the close, presumably MMs have more data to work with and give themselves more leeway in terms of what additional positions they want to take on. though of course i've never been able to see MM combo spreads as you described above.

cutz · 6 April 2020

Sharkman said:
harder to get a fill early on in a session from my experience, even on single option covered call and cash covered put trades. i've always tended to have better luck getting decent fills nearer to the close, presumably MMs have more data to work with and give themselves more leeway in terms of what additional positions they want to take on. though of course i've never been able to see MM combo spreads as you described above.

Too true.

Suppose in my case buying/selling deep ITM/OTM index options Market Makers aren't as keen to play, not too fussed, I'm sure if I push it up to mid it will get filled.

Just tested an ATM vertical, quotes are showing but wider than usual, not sure what's going on today ? May have something to do with the Aussie vix off nearly 25% !

Sharkman · 6 April 2020

cutz said:
Too true.

Suppose in my case buying/selling deep ITM/OTM index options Market Makers aren't as keen to play, not too fussed, I'm sure if I push it up to mid it will get filled.

Just tested an ATM vertical, quotes are showing but wider than usual, not sure what's going on today ? May have something to do with the Aussie vix off nearly 25% !

not seeing that much of a diff in the options over some large caps today vs what they were last week, the far leg of my diagonal spreads (Jun expiry, deltas in the 20-30 range) are trading at IVs of around 40-45, the near leg (near ATM weeklies expiring this thurs) are trading at 70'ish IVs. spreads seem par for the course in the current climate as well eg. CBA Apr 9 $62 calls showing 1.72/2.17 at the time of writing. haven't looked at XJO though. you getting any decent fills on XJO verticals?

cutz · 6 April 2020

Sharkman said:
haven't looked at XJO though. you getting any decent fills on XJO verticals?

That vertical I placed just to check how tight an ATM spread was, it was a bit over 10 points wide, normally I've seen them 1-2 points wide, I pulled it.

ava23 · 14 April 2020

Hi all, quick question if I may.

I'm a UK based resident who invests in the ASX, using Interactive Brokers. Now from what I've gathered, they aren't Chess registered, however I've got a couple of questions below if someone doesn't mind helping me out with regards to these:

1) I've recently entered the top 20 of a company, however do I need to do anything with regards to disclosing this (not that people would care but checking) or will I be sent anything to fill out?

2) I'm understanding that it will show as BNP Paribas or whatever on the Top 20 statement, how can I get this to show my name? Is this only done via chess or is there another way? I'd really like this to display my name and not the bank but is this possible?

Sorry for being a newbie but just after a little help, thanks again

freebird54 · 15 April 2020

Anyone having problems yet again logging into account management - the IB KEY just hangs and Authentication as an alternative fails too?

In reply to above questions IB, not being chess, probably will not be of help

cutz · 15 April 2020

freebird54 said:
Anyone having problems yet again logging into account management - the IB KEY just hangs and Authentication as an alternative fails too?

In reply to above questions IB, not being chess, probably will not be of help

G'day.

Try clearing you cache and restarting browser, if that fails enter via TWS, tested ok my end...

Regards.

cutz · 15 April 2020

ava23 said:
1) I've recently entered the top 20 of a company, however do I need to do anything with regards to disclosing this (not that people would care but checking) or will I be sent anything to fill out?

Hi,

This is the form you may be looking for https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-reso...of-change-of-interests-of-substantial-holder/

Regards.

bellenuit · 15 April 2020

freebird54 said:
Anyone having problems yet again logging into account management - the IB KEY just hangs and Authentication as an alternative fails too?

I've just now logged in to Client Portal using Safari browser on MacOS (latest versions of each). No problems.

freebird54 · 16 April 2020

thanks - much better today

cutz · 16 April 2020

freebird54 said:
thanks - much better today

That's great, what was the fix ?

freebird54 · 16 April 2020

Reset everything web wise
Used different browser
I had already cleared cache

Of course need iPhone and pc to login to a/c management as you have to authenticate on different device.

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