Is it bad risk management practice to rely only on one broker?

I don't know either, just speculating.

But like the failed saving and loan situation back then, it took a long time to get your money back because the Agency needs to verify your claim and make sure it is legit, etc. And I am not sure you will get your stocks/security back or just their value at the time of failure so the opportunity costs......

 

Didn't customers at MF Global lose money, or was it on the non-SIPC eligible contracts?

 

During the GFC I only had one ISP. Because of the volatility, it was not unusual for me to have 15-20+ open orders at a time. My ISP went down and I was a bit freaked. Since then, I have carried two ISPs and consider the add'l fee to be the price of peace of mind (whether it be my ISP or IBKR down).

 

The "well funded" client is also probably smart enough to realize it's 2017, and cloud servers + cell phones are a thing....and triple redundant internet + generator is a completely unjustifiable fixed cost.

 

I was my understanding that MFG was the worst, as it took time to get their money back vs being moved to another broker in a few days, because money was taken from the futures accounts.

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/mf-global-customers-will-recover-all-they-lost/
http://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2013/08/behind-collapse-mf-global.html

 

Your correct but when you live on ranch, takes them long time to come out, don't want to eat through solar in case going to be several hours. Thinking need to put in more panels as they come down in cost.

 

I have IB and Tradier account. It's mainly because Tradier supports US stocks only and provides free 1k stocks quote streaming, whereas IB supports other markets and requires purchasing data streams.

 

No professional/institutional account would rely on only one broker. Lot's of folks whining today about IB being down and trades only moved against them.
We use three brokers - it takes some scale, but one day being offline can be more expensive than all those cheap commissions.
Today was the day that proves why you have multiple points of access.

 

that is good to hear, because I have the same question and have a lot of money in my IB accounts

 

Alex, do you refer to the broker being unable to execute trades within the day? I'm not a day trader (I'm more like a week trader or a month trader), so that is not a big concern to me. I mostly worry about the whole place going under and having >$500K there.

BTW, I must tell you that I attended some options seminars you did about 12 years ago and you were tremendously helpful to me as a newbie. Thank you.