IB – negative share balance.

[KateMoloney]

On Monday night trading session I had a margin call and IB sold some of my positions.

Those positions did not come up in the API report, so I left it.

Turns out the positions IB sold me out of had negative share balances on my IB portfolio.

Have contacted IB to get help (still waiting on response). Just wondering if anyone came across this before?

[KateMoloney]

I closed out those positions this morning by buying back the shares eg QCom -5 balance, bought 5 shares at market.
The balance of the shares is back to 0.

Just want to understand why this happened and if I did the right thing by closing out the positions.

Made money from those negative positions last night. Not sure how, unless it was a short position?

[TrentRothall]

Yeah Kate, the negative value means you were short that position. Is it possible IB closed your initial long and then the API sent a MOC order to close the initial long but hence created a short?

[Nick Radge]

Sounds about right Trent.

Also, Monday night highlighted a glitch in the API.

Some MOC orders were not placed for partial fills when the strategy reached the maximum allowed trades.

The developer will push the updates to fix them in the next day or so.

[KateMoloney]

Thank you Nick & Trent.

Hey Nick, when the API gets updated do we purchase a new licence to get those updates?

[Nick Radge]

When the update has been pushed an orange button will appear when you open the API.

[KateMoloney]

Thanks Nick.

After some digging I cannot find the MOC orders for short sales.

I’ve taken the data from the time when IB sold the positions and the numbers balance when I use that data.

Its odd, IB haven’t been much help.

Equity was only short by $230 which caused IB to sell those shares, so I’ve just topped up the account with cash in case this happens again.

Always learning something new.

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