RE: I Got Margin Called on HERO Today. Things Don't Always Go Up.
You can get called without dipping bellow the minimum collateral ratio. When a settle order executes, if it cannot be satisfied by the order book, it will start eating the least collateralized debt positions until it is satisfied. Settle orderes delay execution by 24 hours, so it is best to keep an eye on the books for their appearance, and adjust collateral accordingly.
I got called on bitUSD the other night this way. I saw the settle order earlier in the day, checked other debt positions and adjusted my collateral so there were sufficient positions lower than mine that I would be safe. Then the price took a dip, and some of the positions bellow mine either increased their collateral and were called, pushing me back within the settlement order's reach. Lesson learned - just because 12 hours ago you were safe does not mean you still are.
Someone really ought to make a bot that can monitor your collateral ratios in their relation to settlement orders and other debt positions, and send xmpp notifications if action needs to be taken to avoid these situations. I would do it myself if I knew how, but unfortunately I haven't had the time to teach myself so far.
How do you do that? Is there a list of all debt positions somewhere?
I agree, a bot like that would be very useful. I do remember seeing a 500 HERO settlement at one point and thinking, "Dang, some people are going to get called on that one." My biggest fail was not realizing I could just put in numbers directly instead of using the slider. And thinking I was "safe" just because of my high ratio.
Normally you can look up smartcoins on cryptofresh and view all the debt positions there, but it has said "Chain reload in progress... we'll be back in a few minutes!" for over 12 hours now - I've withdrawn my vote for its operator as a witness, at least until I see an explanation for the downtime. Bitshares-explorer.io is still in early phases of development and lacks useful information for now, but should become available at some point in the future.
This is a good source: http://cryptofresh.com/a/HERO
(Currently down for chain reloading.)
Cool. I've used this before but didn't think to look up an asset. I'll check it out when it comes back online.