Has anyone gone through this process? Surprisingly even for individual traders it's mandatory. It appear that even with IB, one must file for SEC Edgar access, then file documentation. IB does not assist with it for some reason. As a side note, SEC web interfaces are still stuck in 1995 with blinking "NEW!" gifs, Microsoft FrontPage backgrounds and all. For a financial superpower, it's quite sad. They might take a look at what other countries are doing to realize they're decades behind.
This is not an issue. You just fill the forms, send a notarized act as required and file once a year that nothing changed. No brainer.
Yes, went through it awhile ago, but no longer have it. It is a pain in the neck, mainly dealing with the web site as you mentioned.
In my case it's very straightforward, I have a non-US attorney available but I don't seem to need assistance. I was more interested in experiences or if there's something to keep an eye on, first time doing it and all. Thanks. Notarization has been paused due to Covid (can be filed up to 90 days later). It's interesting that even for non-US persons notarization is required instead of multiple ID copies as is usually required.
I'm not sure about that, but I'd be interested to hear any experiences that contradict me. The specific wording is: You're not registering as a "professional securities trader," just a large one. I think this is referring to something like a series exam. Like others have said, it's just a minor annoyance getting the notarization and navigating the website. I recall having to try a few browsers to get a PDF to upload. It might have been Internet Explorer that worked in the end.
My firm helped me with it. As I remember you needed to log into the site every so often otherwise you needed to go through the whole process again to obtain a new password. This was several years ago. I was asked to do this as at the time I was trading a lot of time spreads with expensive options in the SPX. Buying a 400 call and selling a 399 call for example. Since these were high dollar amount individual options, they wanted me to get the Large Trader ID (I was not in fact a large trader, lol). I eventually needed to renew my ID, but couldn't get into the site as my password expired so I just let it go and they haven't asked me again.