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Since about 2 years its impossible to simply withdraw cash from interactivebrokers in Europe on margin. You can buy more stock on margin, but you can't withdraw cash.

Is this something regulatory related and what do they try to achieve here? Also will I break IB rules or regulations by using any of the obvious workarounds, such as:

  • Sell everything, withdraw what I need, buy back everything I had with the rest of the money + margin
  • Short a stable stock, withdraw money, close position

About a year ago I had this problem and did the short selling method. I put in the transfer and immediately closed my position and it worked. Now it seems IB wants you to keep the short position open until they actually transfer the money.

They seem to be working trying to prevent what I am trying to do, but I don't understand how it makes sense, after all I can at least use method one. What is the point in this regulation and am I risking my account with these methods? Also which of the two is better? I just need 5k from my 300k account which has 15k margin loan already.

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  • are you willing to risk them calling the 15K (20K after your withdrawal)?
    – littleadv
    Commented Apr 10 at 20:56
  • IB doesn't do margin calls, but why would they I am not crossing margin maintenance limits? Commented Apr 10 at 21:21
  • If you're trying to circumvent limitations they would. You should probably talk to them
    – littleadv
    Commented Apr 10 at 21:22

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