IBKR - margin warning, 1 share liquidated (cash account)

R

Riches1

Member
I'm on a cash account on IBKR and I just wanted to buy shares for my monthly DCA, and suddenly it's telling me that my margin is too low and it needs to liquidate something to free up cash. So it liquidated 1 share of another position. This has never happened to me before, and I was under the impression that no borrowing could even happen, ever, when you're on a cash account?

I always try to buy for as many USD as possible (with my CHF, using the auto-convert feature), so maybe that's a bad idea? Maybe you should just always leave like 50 CHF or so, even if you're on a cash account?
 
I had never heard this before, either.

If you went really too close to 0 CHF, it's possible that with exchange rate and fees, you ended up below 0 CHF and this triggered the margin call. Margin call here is kind of a misnomer since you cannot have a margin (anything below is margin). But I would think that IBKR would try to prevent this when doing the operation itself, although it's not always possible since things are moving in real time.

I would indeed recommend a small margin (;)) of safety. The opportunity cost on 50 CHF is insignificant.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top