RFI - Symbol Margin Requirements (possible ER).

[GonzRon]

Describe the feature If you trade futures, you know the margin required may often change. It’s particularly true for IB: being a rather conservative broker, they apply an extra margin required on any contract on top of what is typically dictated by the exchange. Keeping up to date with their latest margins required is a bit of a pain. You’d need to look on their webpage and scroll between dozens and dozens of contracts, at least weekly if you run multiple algos.

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/margin-futures-fops.php

I did take a look at the official WebApi Documentation, specifically: WebApi Querying Equity and Margin. However, this seems to be related to the account's usage of margin, rather than the margin requirements for a symbol in particular. Perhaps the webApi supports this already on instruments, i.e. you can get a ‘live quote’ on the required margin for a given product, however I did not find that capability in their API Docs, so I am not aware of this in webApi, and did not bother looking at TWSAPI documentation.

If the IB webApi does not currently support this, this sample code below can potentially serve as the backend for a new IBeam API call. It could be configured to scrape the site periodically, and maintain a local cache with this information that can be easily queried. Or perhaps, the data could simply be added as a new field to the existing symbol lookup data return object? (i.e. the margin required for the symbol).

Here’s the script:

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk, messagebox
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import csv

def get_margin_requirements(ticker_list):
"""
 Fetches margin requirements for a list of tickers from the Interactive Brokers website.

 Args:
 ticker_list (list): A list of tickers for which to fetch margin requirements.

 Returns:
 list: A list of tuples, each containing the ticker and its margin requirement.
 """
 url = "https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/margin-futures-fops.php"
 response = requests.get(url)

# Check if the request was successful
 if response.status_code != 200:
print(f"Failed to retrieve the webpage. Status code: {response.status_code}")
return []

# Parse the content with BeautifulSoup
 soup = BeautifulSoup(response.content, 'html.parser')

# Locate the table containing margin requirements
 tables = soup.find_all('table')
margin_data = []

# Loop through all tables to find the one containing the data
 for table in tables:
rows = table.find_all('tr')
for row in rows:
cells = row.find_all(['td', 'th'])
cell_texts = [cell.get_text(strip=True) for cell in cells]

# Check if the row contains at least 7 columns and matches one of the tickers
 if len(cell_texts) >= 7 and cell_texts[3] in ticker_list:
# Extract ticker (4th column) and margin requirement (7th column)
 ticker = cell_texts[3]
margin_required = cell_texts[6]
margin_data.append((ticker, margin_required))

return margin_data

def fetch_margins():
# Get the input from the entry field and split it into a list of tickers
 tickers = ticker_entry.get().split(',')
tickers = [ticker.strip().upper() for ticker in tickers if ticker.strip()]

if not tickers:
messagebox.showerror("Input Error", "Please enter at least one ticker.")
return

 # Fetch the margin requirements
 margin_requirements = get_margin_requirements(tickers)

# Use a dictionary to filter out duplicates (ticker as the key)
 unique_margins = {}
for ticker, margin in margin_requirements:
if ticker not in unique_margins:
unique_margins[ticker] = margin

# Clear the existing rows in the treeview
 for row in margin_tree.get_children():
margin_tree.delete(row)

# Insert the unique margin requirements into the table
 for ticker, margin in unique_margins.items():
margin_tree.insert("", "end", values=(ticker, margin))

if not unique_margins:
messagebox.showinfo("No Data", "No margin data found for the specified tickers.")

def export_to_csv():
# Get all the data from the Treeview
 rows = margin_tree.get_children()
if not rows:
messagebox.showwarning("No Data", "No data available to export.")
return

 # Create [or overwrit](file://writer/)e the CSV file
 with open("margin_requirements.csv", "w", newline="") as file:
writer = csv.writer(file)
# Write the header
 writer.writerow(["Ticker", "Margin Required"])
# Write the table data
 for row in rows:
ticker, margin = margin_tree.item(row)["values"]
writer.writerow([ticker, margin])

messagebox.showinfo("Export Successful", "Data [expor](http://tk.tk/)ted to margin_requirements.csv successfully.")

# Create the main application window
app = tk.Tk()
app.title("Margin Requirements App")
app.geometry("500x500")

# Create and place the ticker entry field
ticker_label = tk.Label(app, text="Enter tickers (comma-separated):")
ticker_label.pack(pady=5)
ticker_entry = tk.Entry(app, width=50)
ticker_entry.pack(pady=5)

# Create a frame to hold the buttons
button_frame = tk.Frame(app)
button_frame.pack(pady=10)

# Create and place the fetch button
fetch_button = tk.Button(button_frame, text="Fetch Req Margins", command=fetch_margins)
fetch_button.pack(side="left", padx=5)

# Create and place the export button
export_button = tk.Button(button_frame, text="Export to .CSV", command=export_to_csv)
export_button.pack(side="left", padx=5)

# Create a Treeview widget to display the margin data
margin_tree = ttk.Treeview(app, columns=("Ticker", "Margin Required"), show="headings", height=10)
margin_tree.heading("Ticker", text="Ticker")
margin_tree.heading("Margin Required", text="Margin Required")
margin_tree.pack(pady=20)

# Run the application
app.mainloop()

Thanks to a fellow trader Davide for the write up and the code!