How do you handle short call assignments in IRAs?

If you are assigned on a short stock option at expiration that has a physically delivered underlying your account will take delivery of the stock. Remember that you cannot be both long and short the same contract in your IBKR account and all stock positions are netted out. Assignments are processed as a double random lottery and you will see any assigned stock in your account after IBKR’s overnight system update…

Any short American Style option can be assigned before it stops trading. Option assignments are a double random lottery, so you could get assigned on one or all of the open short American style options in your account before the short option expires. The earliest you would see an assignment to the account is after the IBKR system overnight refresh is completed sometime between midnight and 2 AM EST. Option assignments are processed overnight and…

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…

No. There is no provision for issuing conditional exercise instructions to the OCC. The OCC determines the assignment of options based upon a random process which is initiated only after the deadline for submitting all exercise instructions has ended. In order to avoid the delivery of a long or short underlying stock position when only the short leg of an option spread is in-the-money at expiration, the account holder would need to either close out that short position or consider exercising an at-the-money long option…