Options - Margins and Multi-leg trades

[Vayor]

Hi,

I'm in Australia and there really aren't any decent trading platforms that offer Options trades. The market is ripe for a Robinhood clone to take over here. IG is so far the best platform I've found but there are still some very significant shortfalls to what Robinhood offers US users.

 

The biggest change to Options I would suggest are:

• Reduce the margin requirement of purchasing options to the face value of the option itself. The purchaser of a call or put can't lose more than the value of the premium so requiring margin sufficient to be assigned is redundant. Especially true if you simply modify the platform to cash settle all options contracts on expiry rather than assigning the underlying asset.
• Set up the platform to permit multi-leg trading. Creating a call or put spread by buying and selling a call or a put on the same asset at different strike prices caps the maximum potential loss as long as entering and exiting the spread has to occur with the long and short positions being entered and closed simultaneously. At the moment if I sell a put and then buy a further out of the money put I have to provide double the margin despite significantly reducing my maximum loss exposure. Robinhood would greatly reduce my margin requirement but IG greatly increases it! You're preventing users from taking less risky trading strategies because of higher margin requirements which is the opposite of the outcome you want.

Also I second some other users indicating a limit or stop loss function with options could be quite useful but I'm less fussed about whether that's ever implemented.

 

Just my two cents.

[ArvinIG]

16 minutes ago, Vayor said:

Hi,

I'm in Australia and there really aren't any decent trading platforms that offer Options trades. The market is ripe for a Robinhood clone to take over here. IG is so far the best platform I've found but there are still some very significant shortfalls to what Robinhood offers US users.

 

The biggest change to Options I would suggest are:

• Reduce the margin requirement of purchasing options to the face value of the option itself. The purchaser of a call or put can't lose more than the value of the premium so requiring margin sufficient to be assigned is redundant. Especially true if you simply modify the platform to cash settle all options contracts on expiry rather than assigning the underlying asset.
• Set up the platform to permit multi-leg trading. Creating a call or put spread by buying and selling a call or a put on the same asset at different strike prices caps the maximum potential loss as long as entering and exiting the spread has to occur with the long and short positions being entered and closed simultaneously. At the moment if I sell a put and then buy a further out of the money put I have to provide double the margin despite significantly reducing my maximum loss exposure. Robinhood would greatly reduce my margin requirement but IG greatly increases it! You're preventing users from taking less risky trading strategies because of higher margin requirements which is the opposite of the outcome you want.

Also I second some other users indicating a limit or stop loss function with options could be quite useful but I'm less fussed about whether that's ever implemented.

 

Just my two cents.

Hi @Vayor,

Thank you for you post.

We appreciate your feedback. It will be forwarded to the relevant department to be reviewed. IG is always looking for ways to offer the most instruments and markets in the best possible way.

All the best - Arvin

[PGH]

On 07/07/2022 at 15:07, ArvinIG said:

Hi @Vayor,

Thank you for you post.

We appreciate your feedback. It will be forwarded to the relevant department to be reviewed. IG is always looking for ways to offer the most instruments and markets in the best possible way.

All the best - Arvin

Re:  @Vayo's comment above ... " I'm in Australia and there really aren't any decent trading platforms that offer Options trades."   Fully support this - after hunting around internet for past few days trying to find a decent Online Options broker  in Australia.    Real opportunity to be explored here.
And agree with comments too about doing vertical spread that reduce the risk and the margin in one go.