I bet it's more related to my income level even though in reality the only monthly obligation I have is 330.00 and I make 18k a year on top of whatever my funds and trading do.... It's life... hear hear to the PDT law, that's such a BS law, I understand it's to protect Joe Six pack from 3AM infomercials but come on, government can't regulate morality OR stupidity. I'll check out options express... even .01 a share is much better than what I'm paying right now. As far as handholding goes, I don't see where I'd need to talk to anyone at all unless they get something wrong with the #'s...
Just checked out OptionsExpress... it's only per share above 1000 shares... and under 1000 shares it's 14.95... ouch... that's double what I'm paying now...
Perhaps in 6 months you can reapply with IB? Maybe your situation will have changed to allow compliance with their criteria? Good fortune to you...I would be as perplexed as you, and your thread was appropriate. What else can you do? A company can choose who they do business with and if you had done a clerical error that they could have overlooked.... well then you would know...I suspect some of the other posters might be correct in the "guess" as to why your were denied. Michael B.
i checked out firsttrade site and choice trades site in my view whether you agree with it or not i think your account would be a perfect fit and happier with choice trade they have no acount minimuim for cash accounts and only $2000 for a margin acct. they also have a variety of platform options for you to choose from. http://www.choicetrade.com/ i dont want you to get the wrong impression, i dont condone lying on your acct application but this is the real world. you could also before filling out and sending an application give the new accnts department a call talk to them politely and explain your situation and if they say no call bac/email a week later talk to someone else so on so forth but be persistant. longhornextreme dont let it bother you plenty of brokerages to choose from.
Thanks for the reply Ken, but I'm not sure about Choicetrade, it really seems like Firstrade except it's a dollar cheaper. I'd really like the option of being able to bracket orders and I'd have to pay 99 a month for that at choicetrade... i'd probably go over to TS if I'm going to pay 100 a month... After doing the math, I really might save the money anyhow... decisions decisions
Thanks spyder... I actually got halfway through MB's application and saw they have a 50k income minimum... Thanks anyways...
Yeah 100 shares is still 14.95. Sorry I made it seem otherwise. But... If you make 9 or more trades in a single quarter, they reduce it to $10 for 1000 shares. That's not bad at all, but... I take it you'll be trading under 1000 shares? Yeah $10 would be a lot for 100-200 shares.
I would expect most of my lots to be sub 1000 shares, not many in the 100 range mind you, but for 2-400 shares IB or MB or any of those would save me so much money and allow me to be more active and both systems help keep me out of hitting the PDT restriction as I think my init deposit would be 6ish and then bring my 3-4 over from Firstrade... I've got a new system that's shorter term (2-4) days and I figured I might as well save the extra 5-10 bucks a trade if all it matters is a new brokerage account.