So how common is the nightmare scenario where your Broker freezes your account while you still have open trades or prevents large withdrawals during times of market turmoil? Like what if you had a hugely profitable trade open during the week of a big market downturn, and your broker conveniently started having website / server problems and froze your account preventing you from closing out your profitable trade and making withdrawals, what exactly are your rights, if any? Any stories from the 2000 or 2008 crash?
Websites and datafeeds may freeze due to many circumstances, sometimes technological reasons, other times trade-related reasons. Trading may be halted for particular stocks or markets as well. If you can't get through the phone to your broker, you will get screwed in adverse situations, which is why people hedge I guess. Don't bet the farm on one trading idea. Diversify as much as possible, different markets, even multiple accounts, brokers and technology stacks may work for that. Of course, for us in the beginning stages, you do this step by step, not all in one go, and may thus experience more risk and adversity, than the more established players. Backtest should cover those periods (minimum 15 years) and may help you place bets that are more resilient against risk of ruin. Sometimes your best hedge may be putting money where the best value is and you just need to stomach the pain. The backtest should show that the drawdown is worth more money in the end and be diverse enough that it's not just a statistical spike in your data (difficult to know in advance before forward testing). Of course, if you're a short-term trader and trading large, you will get screwed more by such events, that may just be speedbumps for longer-term players.
1. This is one of the big advantage if you deal with a PB such as ADMIS, NewEdge, etc. they're quite expensive but if the exchange halts, you can close your position Over-The-Counter and sleep well until it re-opens. 2. During 9/11 the exchanges halted. 3. You have no right. Conveniently that's for your own good, imagine another trader with your broker loses 10m$ and asks for 10m$ from the broker, it may bankrupt them, plus you.
If you start making too much or your timing is too good you will find platform issues, trades deleted, and so on. Initially there are soft filters, but if they don't work then the fixed filters are used, never in your favor though. The lower you are in the food chain, ie. retail at the bottom, the more opaque everything is, it will look like an anomaly on your side but the markets have perfected the art of separating retail from their capital and making it look like it's your fault.
Unless you have your tinfoil hat firmly affixed, then you'll be protected. Just a tip, you may want to provide proof and names when you make an accusation like this up, otherwise we'll treat you like a conspiracy theory crackpot which is in fact all you'd be without some modicum of proof.