Exceptional Circumstances
Gain a comprehensive understanding of market volatility and its significant impact on your investment portfolio. Whether you’re a seasoned investor or new to trading, this page will help you navigate the challenges posed by extraordinary market conditions and make informed decisions to protect and grow your investments.
What are exceptional circumstances?
Financial markets are known to fluctuate, sometimes even experiencing rapid shifts. This is referred to as market volatility. During periods of heightened volatility, often triggered by rare and unexpected events, we strongly recommend that you monitor your investment portfolio more intensively.
We also advise you to pay special attention to communications from Interactive Brokers.
In this article, we explain how to engage in more intensive portfolio monitoring, where to find additional information, and how these situations could potentially impact your portfolio.
How do I see if a product is blocked?
For investors, it’s crucial to maintain an overview of the situation and to quickly determine if the products in their portfolios are still tradable, enabling them to act promptly. Whether a product has been blocked by the responsible broker or the respective exchange can be determined based on various indications.
Below, we’ll show you how to check if products have been blocked due to unpredictable events, often referred to as a Black Swan Event.
After logging into LYNX+ and filling in the order ticket, it is recommended to check the preview window. If you are not able to transmit an order in the product to LYNX because order execution by Interactive Brokers is not possible you will immediately receive a red error message.
Please check whether the error message refers to the ongoing exceptional circumstances; this is usually displayed as “Regulatory Restriction” or “Sanctioned“.
After logging into the Trader Workstation you can see the first signs of a blocked product within the “Financial Instrument” column of your watchlist or portfolio, in most cases it will show a red warning icon. Hover your cursor over the warning icon to read the message. Messages like “Sanctioned” or “Regulatory Restriction” generally indicate a block resulting from exceptional circumstances.
During Black Swan Events, stock exchanges may remain closed and products may not be tradable. In such scenarios, you may not see any warning signs in your watchlist or portfolio. However, as soon as you have filled the order ticket and displayed the preview window, you will receive an error message indicating that the product is blocked due to a “Regulatory Restriction“. Alternatively, the message may display that the product is “Sanctioned“.
Alternatively, you can obtain information about the tradability of the products from the websites of Interactive Brokers or other external sources. In principle, the websites of Interactive Brokers, the respective stock exchanges or the websites of authorized financial authorities are suitable for obtaining trustworthy information. You can read more about this in the following section.
Products can be blocked at any moment, often without prior warning.
Stay informed
As an investor, staying on top of the financial markets is crucial. You can find certain and reliable information about market restrictions as well as restrictions concerning certain stocks on the respective website of the exchange. Additionally, we recommend using external sources for deeper insights.
| Financial Authority | Website | External News Source | Website |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEC (USA) | SEC.gov | HOME | Bloomberg | Bloomberg.com |
| AFM (The Netherlands) | Voor de Sector | CNBC | International: Top News And Analysis |
| FSMA (Belgium) | Nieuws & Waarschuwingen | FSMA | CNN Financial | Stock Market Data – US Markets, World Markets, and Stock Quotes | CNN |
| BaFin (Germany) | Startseite | Forbes | Forbes |
| FIN-FSA (Finland) | Financial Supervisory Authority | Investing | Investing.com – Stock Market Quotes & Financial News |
| AMF (France) | Autorité des marchés financiers : protection de l’épargne, information des investisseurs, fonctionnement des marchés financiers | AMF | MarketWatch | Home Page – MarketWatch |
| CNB (Czech Republic) | Česká národní banka | Reuters | Currency Market Headlines | Breaking Stock Market News | Reuters |
| https://twitter.com/ |
Disclaimer: Please note that LYNX does not assume any liability for the mentioned sources.
How do extreme markets influence my portfolio?
Extreme markets are characterized by significant volatility due to internal or external events. These market movements can have several consequences, including but not limited to:
Increase in Volatility
Volatility is a statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a given security or market index. In most cases, the higher the volatility, the riskier the security. Volatility is often measured as either the standard deviation or variance between returns from that same security or market index.
In the securities markets, volatility is often associated with big swings in either direction. For example, when the stock market rises and falls more than one percent over a sustained period, it is called a “volatile” market. An asset’s volatility is a key factor when pricing options contracts.
In extreme movement of markets, the volatility tends to increase.
Change in IB Margin Policies
As a LYNX client, your trading account is held with Interactive Brokers (IB). The trading account can be a cash account or a margin account. For margin accounts, IB enforces strict margin requirements, the terms and conditions of which can be found by clicking here: Margin Requirements | Interactive Brokers Ireland
LYNX has no control over these policies, as they are solely managed by IB. To ensure the safety of its clients in all circumstances, Interactive Brokers may change certain measures relating to margin requirements in the event of unprecedented volatility in the financial markets at any time and also fully at their own discretion. When this occurs, the changes encourage the reduction of leverage in client portfolios and thereby ensure that client accounts are properly funded.
Interactive Brokers are committed to a forward-looking, prudent, and realistic approach to risk management.
You must ensure to have enough excess liquidity to protect your portfolio from liquidation due to increase margin requirements. In case of a margin violation, immediate liquidation of portfolio positions may occur without further notice.
Change in Exchange/Statutory
Exchanges may restrict or halt certain securities from trading with or without notice.
Brokers will follow all regulations related to restrictions or halts which impact the transmission of orders.
This may result in the following events:
- New positions cannot be opened.
- Current positions may not be closed anymore.
- Transfers of targeted assets may be unavailable.