Let me start by saying that I am the biggest worrywart there is.. but there is 1 thing I simply refuse to worry about.. that I will lose my money in an SIPC retail account. If SIPC does'nt work nothing will. If my BD goes under, they will simply move the account to another BD clearing for that firm. If that clearing firm goes under then SIPC will pay up to 100K in cash and since I don't have in excess of that, it is not a problem. Furthermore, short of a financial meltdown of a systemic nature, there is an extremely remote possibility that clearing firms would fail that in aggregate would deplete SIPC of monies it needs to pay for that errant clearing firm.
Quote from arnegr: it has so many conditions, your money will almost never be returned, and if it is, it will take an effort and time greater than the loss. you lose twice, in trying to get any money out of sipc. Would you elaborate please? Is this from personal experience? What kind of conditions? I thought that if your money and/or equity positions were in a retail account, and below the 100K/500K limit, you were covered - period.
Quote from GATrader: I don't think futures account are protected by any form of insurance other than the integrity of the clearing firm... This is yet another reason why IB's universal account rocks. Any money not required as performance bond for a futures position is swept to the (insured) linked equity account.
Southwest Securities has about three times the capital that Penson does. I have not checked out others like Instinet, whoever XOOM uses, and Assent. Who does Track trade use? I don't think the question of your b/d is totally irrelevant, as they have the opportunity to make changes in your trades and psotions to resolve outtrades, etc. They also have the ability to request wire transfers from your account. If they had a crooked employee, I'm not sure if the clearing firm would make it good.