The loan is linked to your account, not a specific security, eventhough this is those securities that allows you to borrow. If the margin requirement for one security goes to 100%, they won’t liquidate anythig on the account if the margin requirement of other securities are enough globally
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That was a little joke, of course, no offense meant.
Yes it is exactly this. Although IB seems to be less predictable with margin ratios these days, but who can blame them?
For open positions you should see margin requirements as cash value, i.e. what you have calculated by position value * margin ratio. - No, sorry, only for futures and options.
With portfolio margin you should be able to reduce margin requirements by adding options, e.g. long puts or short calls to long stocks. Never tried it myself.
Hi all,
I need 50k in 3-4 days and would like to borrow against my portfolio to have this money available.
Is this possible?
If so, what are the step by step of doing so?
I have a non margin account at the moment.
Thank you
How much do you have invested?
You need to be careful and take a safety margin.
If there is a -60% from current valuation, your margin could be called. iBKR will sell all your existing positions at the worst time to finance your loan.
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One day to change the account type.
One day to withdraw. Should arrive the same day if you send the withdrawal order in the morning.
No problem as long as you stay within 25%, short term even 35% should be fine.
You may want to check what securities you have and what their margin requirements. Some ETFs from SIX has 100% margin requirements, so no borrowing.
It might also raise a red flag that you change the account type and immediately withdraw a large amount…
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Should I change the account type to Margin or Portfolio Margin?
The loan will be around 25% of what is currently invested
Better not Portfolio Margin. For this they specifically indicate that changing to Portfolio Margin and directly taking lots of leverage will raise a red flag.
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Sounds good, thank you for the help.
I will transfer arround 35k CHF but I need to take out 50k EUR.
And I will transfer the remaining 15k CHF on the 25th so I believe I should be good.
Thank you for the help!
My big problem is that the time it would take to convert the CHF into EUR and make the withdrawal is already too long to be able to close the deal.
Let’s see if it works better with margin
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I kind of do it from time to time, but not for such amounts. Withdraw couple of thousands EUR to use during a vacation, repay later.
Hi guys,
So I will share my experience with Margin in IB.
Day 1: Change Account Type from Cash to Margin.
Day 2: Account Type is changed and I can now withdraw more money than what I had in cash.
I had 30k CHF and withdrew 30k EUR. I had -30k EUR and +30k CHF. (later during that day, I changed 29k CHF to 30k EUR and was no longer -30k EUR)
Since the withdraw was before 11am, the money arrived in my Portuguese bank account by 3pm on day 2.
I ended up not using margin (I would have taken out 20k but withdrew from an EUR investment).
Context: The purpose of this was to sign a contract to buy an apartment that is being built and was a great opportunity (100k discount vs similar apartments in the area, while being brand new). I had to get 50k EUR in 3 days or I would risk losing the deal.
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