Let's say you're long 100 shares and you decide you want to reverse your position and go short the same number. So, you put in an order to short 200 shares. Would you be charged one fee: shorting 200 shares; or, two fees: selling 100 shares and shorting 100 shares? tx
As I understand it with my broker (IB) you would be charged for one trade. I would think that most brokers would be the same and would question any that did not treat it as one trade. After all the actual trade in the exchange could literally be one trade for 200 shares and its just a matter of how its accounted for in your account. With that being said there may still be some old platform software that prop traders use that requires them to declare if a trade is a short sale and then maybe they would have to do two trades as two separate actions (that would not make me happy BTW) I hope that helps but I would confirm it with your broker. RW
It is actually two trades since the coding for a short sale has to be different. But agree with above comment that IB handles as a single trade for commission purposes.