Cash balance when shorting mutually exclusive stocks

When simultaneously shorting two (or more) mutually exclusive stocks the system deducts cash based on the 'worst possible scenario' which is that the trader would have to pay out on both contracts. However, when holding two mutually exclusive contracts the trader would have to pay out on at most one of the contracts.

For example, if I short event A and event B (which are mutually exclusive) for 50c each I gain $1 in revenue but have to pay $2 to cover potential losses. The actual potential loss is in fact only $1.

A simple to implement partial solution to this is being able to sell bundles for $1 with $1 being the cover amount. However, this would not work for unbundled stocks which are also mutually exclusive.

kmb56, just buy bundles. If you are short two mututally exclusive stocks and you buy a bundle for $1 then you will get $2 worth of your depsits back, for a net $1 free cash. I'm pretty sure this is what you want to do.

Yes I can see this will work.

But the problem still exists for unbundled mutually exclusive stocks, which do exist. I can see the rationale for delaying bundling to allow further contracts or if a stock is mutually exclusive with two other stocks which are not mutually exclusive with each other. So bundling isn't the answer here I guess; I think the system could probably be easily modified to allow each contract to have a list of mutually exclusive contracts and, if a trader is short in both, the cash balance is only reduced by $1.