An 18 year old Harvard freshman, who happens to be a friend of a friend, was looking forward to investing with my help. I had never used TradeStation, but other buddies have with great satisfaction, so I recommended it to her. Unfortunately, TS and their infinite wisdon decided to not allow anyone under 21 to sign up. Furthermore, they have frankly silly policies by EXCEEDING finra rules, obviously because of some misplaced notion of saving money by not allowing "unexpirenced" investors, a poor stereotype if I've ever heard of one. This disenchament will forever prevent me from completing my switch to TradeStation (for my personal accounts).... get with it TS. Also please don't show of windows XP in your commercials...
My first thought is that a neophyte trader such as your friend should not be taking advice from you, or anyone else who is steering under-capitalized beginners towards over-leverage and over-trading right off the bat.
Please quote me where I said leverage or 'over trading' (what does that mean?) Anyone who went through Goldman basic training will share how they were sent to the front line on the trading desks and spat at when they fumbled, not unlike what goes on at the service academies. Anyways, the plan was to be able to pay for grad school, and if she blew up I would pay it anyways. I don't mean to rant on TS, but these parmaters are only puting pain points on customers. If a brokerage (TS) really wants to save cash, adopt Arvin requirements similar to IB that will prevent you from loosing customers, not prevent gaining them.
+1 When this person loses most/all of their money - and they will, TS would likely have to dodge a lawsuit/arbitration, or regulatory hassle for letting them. Sad but with all the vulture lawyers around, "individual responsibility" has no meaning...
I apologize for my negative response, but I honestly think those policies are not helping you, TS. Minimum age and even account sizes are not hedges against preventing your customers from blowing up, IMHO. Other rule tightening would do the trick, like minimum market cap, margin reqs, no market orders on otcbb, etc.
I've never heard of such a law suit, at least one that won. Good point though, no doubt the individual responsibility is out the window. Perhaps you should understand that its important to get more people in the game. I've been doing this since highschool, and college, where nearly 30 friends payed off some of their tutition thanks to me. Now I live in a quazi-modest depression era home in south west Connecitut still doing the same thing. IMO, don't be so quick to judge "why should she tak advice from you!?".
Investing via TS? You must be pulling legs here. You can invest through Fidelity. TS is for speculators who understand the market risks. In my opinion, an 18 year old has no business trading. Should be studying hard to try to get as much education as possible. Of course there are different views on this. I believe that the minimum age for speculative trading should be set at 26.