Investor Help (NO Ihub questions)

[cintrix]

As long as you keep the money in the IRA account you don't pay any capital gain taxes. You also can't take any losses either. You are taxed on the money in the account when you start taking distributions that are taxed as ordinary income.

Different brokers have different rules regarding trading in an IRA:


What specific restrictions/features do brokers put on their IRA accounts? Data on a few brokers:
E*TRADE and optionsXpress: Futures not supported
Fidelity: Futures not supported
Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade: Limited margin for avoiding settlement date restrictions
Schwab: No options spreads, futures not supported
Thinkorswim: Looks pretty open, including futures

Options

Can I trade options in my IRA account? You need to be qualified and allowed trades vary between brokers, but yes you can—except for selling naked calls or puts—the highest risk category.

What happens if options in my IRA are assigned? Option assignment can be a problem if it not covered by cash or offset by other positions in your account (e.g., stock in the case of a covered call, or an offsetting assigned option). For example, if the short side of your vertical spread is assigned when the underlying goes ex-dividend your account will go short the equivalent amount of the underlying—not a sustainable situation for an IRA account. You must cover the short quickly, but unless you have sufficient settled cash in your account you may get a “free ride” violation (see Trading in an IRA and avoiding free-riding). A call to your broker if this situation occurs would be a very good idea. It might be possible in this case to wait one day before covering and avoid the violation. Unbalanced option assignment can also happen when the options in a spread expire with one leg in the money and the other OTM. Cash settled options (e.g. SPX, VIX) don’t have this problem. See Options strategies in Your IRA Account for more information. Index options are nice because they are usually european style options that can’t be assigned before expiration—totally dodging the problem, however they have some weird restrictions when used in an IRA for any combination that uses different expiration dates.

Can I sell puts in my IRA? You can sell cash secured puts in your IRA if you have approval for that level of options trading from your broker and you have enough cash in your account to buy the requisite amount of the underlying security (100 shares per option) if your puts are assigned. An alternative is to open put spreads where the long leg strike price is well below the short leg. This approach doesn’t tie up as much cash and allows limit orders at the lowest possible increment (e..g, one cent for equities).

http://sixfigureinvesting.com/2012/11/top-15-questions-about-trading-in-an-ira/