Typical IRA at interactive brokers question

C2
1

Hi all,

I’m making an IRA trading system, and have a few questions.

  1. Freeriding (T+2) rule, at IB it seems you can have a margin IRA account, that won’t be subject to the freeriding rule? If so this would be great, as without this, I’d have to make the system NOT sell or NOT buy when it should, to avoid freeriding violations.

  2. Do most users have at least $25k to avoid PDT violations? If not, this makes the system less than optimal, as I’d have to avoid situations where if more than a few daytrades have occured, I’d have to NOT do a trade when optimally it is better to do the trade.

Since it seems most users have IB, #1 shouldn’t be an issue. But is #2 an issue? Do most system creators worry about avoiding PDT violations? Thanks.

2

It seems to me that most subs that are willing to pay the C2 fees have more than $25,000 in their accounts. I am sure there are plenty with less than $25k but they probably won’t have enough disposable money to remain a subscriber for most strategies anyway. For number one IB does have a solution for IRAs like you are mentioning.