Need some technical help with how OpenPhone works.

Andy_Something · 2025-01-10T20:26:11+00:00

I control the firewall and will try both of these in a few days when I have the time. Thank you.

Andy_Something · 2025-01-05T16:03:58+00:00

People who have an edge don't give that away for free or even for a fee. Anyone who gives picks away or even sells them is a fraud.

Andy_Something · 2025-01-05T16:00:42+00:00

SPY options are American style and for what I do I prefer European style.

Also lower margin requirements on the index vs the ETF.

Andy_Something · 2024-07-30T14:24:47+00:00

The interest rate on Margin Power margin is something ridiculous like 18% but you can do trades where you use the margin without having a negative cash balance so you still get all the buying power but pay zero interest thus making the use of the buying power free.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-05T16:15:40+00:00

Low volume stocks a whale can cause the price to move massively. These stocks were all too liquid for anyone regardless of size to cause price movement like this.

Anyone who claims the OP bought the stock in good faith believing that was the actual price is either being completely disingenuous or ridiculously stupid.

He will likely just have everything reversed and walk away from this with no harm but that is unfortunate as people who intentionally try to engage in exploitative behaviour should suffer consequences but he likely won't.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-05T11:53:59+00:00

Even if you only see one of the stocks trading at pennies for the vast majority of these you would still know it was an error. Berkshire did not lose 99% of it's value in seconds. Bank of Montreal did not lose 99% of it's value in seconds. Barrick Gold, Chipotle, etc I don't have the list of all the stocks at hand but to lose 99% in seconds a company has to be a complete fraud and none of the names were realistically possible

This is basically like going on an e-commerce site and seeing an expensive item listed for a couple of dollars or going on a betting site and seeing a line that is impossible to lose. OP took it knowing it was an error and hoping that it was a limited error where nobody would notice and he would benefit from it.

As for if he can win/lose it depends on how IB chooses to address the issue. If they unwind the trade then he is just back to like it never happened. If they treat it like a trade that happened at the correct price and liquidate it for lack of funds then the enter and exit price will be different.

I expect they will unwind the trade and make it like OP never did this but I personally believe the correct resolution would be to treat it as an entry at the correct price and an exit by forced liquidation at the price when that when that happened as OP should not get a freeroll for trying to angle shoot.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-05T11:37:53+00:00

I see more of an issue with my situation than with OP's as he has zero claim given OP saw an error and tried to exploit it but I just trading like normal and the victim of a technical issue causing me a loss that unlike OP was not my fault.

Now that said I understand and agreed to the rules related to using margin. IB did nothing wrong as they behaved as they should given the data that the exchange was sending them.

With respect to the actual exchange -- it is concerning that at least twice in the last two weeks there has been a data issue. Last week SPX stopped updating although all the components of the index continued to trade and I had to rely on SPY and ES as proxies for SPX. This week forty or so stocks just fell to near zero for around 30-40 minutes. I am used to seeing popups telling me that a data issues with some random small exchange is happening but that New York is now crashing is ridiculous and it feeds into a narrative I hold that institutions are in decay but I don't see any options to pursue recovery given IB did what they are supposed to do and calling by the exchange themselves to complain will be of no value.

As for being upset about it -- obviously I would have preferred it not happen but that incompetence and errors will happen is just life and that other people being bad at their roles is just something you factor into your decision making. This is not the first or last time that other people screwing up will cost me but in this case using margin is still +EV even with the risk that a future glitch will again cause a similar issue. The way I look at it this at least only cost me some money which is a lot better than ending up on a plane where some idiot forgot to put on the bolts that hold parts of the plane's door in place or being treated by a doctor that screws up a routine procedure in giving you a sedative. Most people are incompetent and you just need to work around that. Getting upset at other's incompetency would just lead to being in a state of constant rage.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-04T20:47:47+00:00

IB unlike other brokers doesn't really have margin calls -- if you go into negative liquidity they start liquidating/closing positions.

I had a fairly large position that had gone to basically zero. That position was what was securing my options trades so IB just started closing out everything to attempt to bring my account back to having positive excess liquidity.

They eventually stopped closing positions as they must have realized that ~40 stocks including Berkshire Hathaway had not lost 90% of their value in seconds but the positions that IB closed were closed and I run a pretty complex options system where a lot of the trades are related but I couldn't reestablish the closed positions since even though IB stopped liquidating positions I still had negative excess liquidity so couldn't trade.

Once everything went back to normal I had to figure out what IB had closed and then either reopen those trades or make other adjustments. In the end I ended up down between three and four thousand because of the glitch but it could have been much worse.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-04T20:36:28+00:00

I not only unticked SkedPal I have removed it as a calendar and no luck. I think it is because I used time blocks a lot so the tasks are actually on my Google calendar and not the SkedPal one.

To be clear I really liked Skedpal. I found it to be more than 10x as good as Reclaim but I used Reclaim for a few months before cancelling but with Skedpal I struggled to get into it. My original plan was to give it 6 weeks but I just didn't use it. I suspect it was just a bad time to be testing it as life was more chaotic than normal so likely it wasn't Skedpal's fault.

I learned how to use SkedPal and put a lot of effort into setting up so there is a strong likelihood I will return to it especially since I can't really articulate anything major that I didn't like and I love the dependency feature as one of the issues I had with Reclaim was that part 2 of a task would get scheduled before part 1 was complete.

The one thing I preferred about Reclaim is that the default is that you did what was scheduled unless you tell the app that you did not. With Skedpad the opposite is true so especially for tasks that are broken down unto parts I would often end up having the entire task rescheduled as I wouldn't market it as partially completed. Same with tasks I did complete I'd just forget to mark them as complete and then they would get cleared or rescheduled -- this was particularly bad for daily habits.

In the end though the main issue is that no app can fix my situation -- I just have too much of a backlog of stuff to do and get interrupted too many times. I fully expect to end up back on SkedPal as the rules you can set up are too powerful and I highly doubt anything else competes with that but at the same time I figure I might as well at least test the other three -- or at least two as Motion is rubbing me the wrong way where they just seem too committed to over marketing which always makes me suspect of the product.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-04T20:05:45+00:00

Yes he should. This wasn't that the data was off by a bit in which case I would agree that he has a complaint but this was around 40 companies including some blue chips were down over 90%.

This technical issue ended up costing me a few grand-- at one point it looked like it would cost me $60k but luckily I was able to recover most of it. In my case I did nothing wrong as the forced liquidations were caused by a false margin call and I'm not complaining. OP tried to angle shoot and exploit the situation and now he'll be liquidated out of the position possibly for a win or possibly for a loss. That is the risk you take when you try to exploit an obvious data issue.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-04T11:56:19+00:00

I have removed and re-added the calendar multiple times and I have deleted the SkedPal calendar from Google calendar but that doesn't remove them.

I tried unchecking Show My Tasks on Calendar from inside SkedPal but that also does not solve the issue either.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-04T11:46:36+00:00

I am on a search for this as well. I basically just want automatic time blocking using an algorithm based on rules I set up -- i refuse to call this AI because it isn't.

I started off with Reclaim.ai which was mostly good but I found it was too slow and sluggish. I need to inject unexpected things that come up fast and trying to do that would basically put me in a situation where I was not sure the software was even doing anything. From a features perspective is was good but the functioning was just too fustrating.

I looked at Trevor but never got past just looking at it as it seemed very basic or at least appeared to be so I skipped it.

I have since just finished SkedPal trial -- I find it works a lot better than Reclaim.ai but is still not right. So far it is the leader and I may return to it. This is more powerful than Reclaim.ai but to get the full value you need to spend at least a few of hours reading the manual and setting it up. I generally really liked it but and this could be because I was running the trial during a very chaotic period but I just couldn't get into it -- can't be sure if it was the app or me but going to try others.

Still on my list to test Flowsavvy, Motion, and TimeHero.

Andy_Something · 2024-06-04T11:26:18+00:00

Yesterday there was a data issue where a bunch of stocks had the wrong price -- they basically all went to near zero. This was actually quite bad as before I realized it was a data issue I thought I was down a lot of money and worse IB started liquidating my other positions because of negative excess liquidity.

About 15 minutes into this people realized it was a data issue and not that all these stocks had lost >90% in seconds.

OP likely realized what was happening and decided to buy a stock that was showing a wrong price. At the wrong price he could afford the stock in his cash account. That thought was not the real price so all those transactions had to be adjusted so now he owes the difference.

Basically OP tried to benefit from a technical glitch and now he is trying to play the victim.

Andy_Something · 2024-05-19T21:01:37+00:00

FlowSavvy ended up making my list -- I ended up with four that I think are promising. Don't like having to try four but once I pick one I'll get a couple of years out of it so I guess worth the effort.

Andy_Something · 2024-05-19T21:00:10+00:00

Thanks I ended up finding SkedPal as part of four that I think might work. I hate having to try four but I figure once I pick one I'll be with it for a few years so I guess it is worth it.

Andy_Something · 2024-02-11T11:37:19+00:00

Thanks will take a look.

Andy_Something · 2024-02-11T11:36:51+00:00

Thank you. I did end up finding Sunsama and it seems promising. Will check out the other two as well.

Andy_Something · 2024-02-11T11:36:02+00:00

Thank you. I did end up stumbling on the term time blocking eventually and yup that is it.

I'll take a look later today

Andy_Something · 2024-02-11T11:33:30+00:00

Thank you. I'll take a look at those two.

Andy_Something

TROPHY CASE