If you received an assignment on an option position, and your account does not have enough buying power to support the resulting assignment. When this occurs action is required to bring your account back to good standing.

While this is unresolved, your account is temporarily restricted from trading option contracts on the same underlying symbol.

What can you do?

You have several options to resolve this situation:

• Deposit additional funds into your account to support the new stock position.
• Close the stock position by executing a trade.
• Exercise the long contract(s) to close the stock position.
  • If you choose to exercise, you may reach out to us via email or chat with your request and we can process it on your behalf.

How the restriction is lifted

Once you have taken action, reach out to us via email or chat and we will remove the lock and lift the restriction.

What happens if no action is taken?

If no action is taken during the trading day, the Margin Team will address the account by either:

• Closing the resulting stock position and the long option position, or
• Exercising a long option position on the same underlying stock symbol.

Please be aware that if this is not addressed, we may close positions to satisfy any potential margin calls.

Please visit Alpaca Docs to read more.

Options trading is not suitable for all investors due to its inherent high risk, which can potentially result in significant losses. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before investing in options.