What does the error message cannot hold short stock mean?

Recipients of the message "Account May Not Hold Positions: Short Call" have either opened a Cash Account or have enabled Limited Option Trading permissions. Cash Accounts are not able to hold uncovered short call positions. If you wish to upgrade to a margin account, please access…

In case you have a Cash type account you will not be able to route orders directly to EBS.

Please Note…

A Short Sell order will be accepted and can possibly trade if you have a margin type account and there is sufficient Available Funds to meet any change in the account's margin requirements. If If you do not want the ability to sell short, you would need to have a Cash type account as Cash accounts cannot borrow shares of stock to naked short sell, be short naked Call options or short non-cash secured Put options. Cash accounts are restricted from holding a short balance in any currency as this would also constitute a loan from IBKR…

CHANGE ACCOUNT TYPE

In an IBKR Cash account you cannot hold a short option as part of a call/put spread as credit spreads are not allowed in Cash accounts. You would have to upgrade the account to a Margin account…