a trivial question. i have an account with Firstrade, in which I hold a long position in GDXJ and short position in GDX, with margin. I have recently opened an account with IB and am looking to transfer my entire portfolio there. Is it easier to 1. close my Firstrade account, wire all funds into my bank, wire to IB, re-establish my portfolio, or 2. transfer all my asset to IB? Considering that I use an offshore bank, the $50 for asset transfer is cheaper than the multiple international wire fees. Are there any other consideration in terms of fees ?
Personally I always liquidate to cash first and then do wire transfer. I think asset transfers can take much longer and you could get in the middle of an asset transfer unable to get out of a position when you wanted to. Mixups can occur also. Also some brokers will charge a fee for asset transfers. But usually you should be able to wire transfer directly from FirstTrade or any other broker to IB, without going via your bank, unless the account names are different or some such. If there were long-term positions with tax consequences, things might be different.
I would first go to all cash at FirstTrade. Then I suspect you will you will be best served by doing an account transfer to IB and pay the $50.00 fee to FirstTrade. You might be able to simply do a wire transfer of the all cash position from First Trade to IB but I have my doubts.
why do you liquidate all positions and do a cash portfolio transfer to IB? things to consider -process time -cost -opportunity PnL (closely linked to process time) -ease it seems that doing transfer (ACATS) is better..
I have done several broker to broker transfers and all of them involved stock transfers with cash. For the receiving brokers, they considered the transferred shares as being purchased on the date received and at the closing price the day before being received. This messed up my tax lots and caused problems within my accounting software's schedule D preparation. I think I found with IB I was able to change my IB tax lots in my account but that was not the case with some brokers. This did not make it easy for me come tax time. From now on I will do my account transfers as cash only or I will close one account and have the check sent to me (no lost earned interest with the present zero interests rates) and send funds to the new account (I would not wait on the funds from the closed account before sending funds to the new account).
True. The asset transfer method would probably work fine in most cases but there are just a lot more moving parts to it and potential for error. Most of the time it is going to work ok. If you want to do it between those two particular brokerages, and do not mind being locked out of your account for a week, then you should likely be ok. I would just call them both and ask them how long it usually takes and which way is least problematic.