I would either tell what I know, give my opinion or say nothing. Penson has one current issue revolving around a debt to equity swap. When that is complete, their balance sheet will be clean. The excess debt and monthly interst charges were a drag on earnings. The conversion of the debt to equity is a weight on the stock because of dilution. If the swap does not go through, they will have other issues to contend with. The other firms you listed all went bankrupt from excessive risk from trading. Penson does NOT have a prop desk. My hope this that this will be resolved soon for their clients. With reguard to the stock price, I'm not a buyer. Is that honest enough for you? Bob
http://barnhardt.biz/ MF Global 2.0 May Be Unfolding Now Posted by Ann Barnhardt - May 2, AD 2012 11:41 PM MST If you are foolish enough to still be in the markets and you are doing business with anyone who clears through Penson Worldwide, you need to get out of there. The stock symbol is PNSN. Just google that and look at the chart. $31.50 high, now trading at $0.49, making new lows daily. In case you didn't know, I was clearing through Penson when I closed my firm last November. I was blessed in that all of my back office stuff was handled by a lovely little boutique office in Wisconsin that handled IBs like me, that had just been acquired by Penson before I came on board. I never spoke to Chicago or New York, just a merry band of Wisconsinites who were always wonderful to work with. I was truly blessed in that. (The cattle and feeder futures paper that I did in the pit, as opposed to the electronic, which was less and less over the years as the electronic markets grew and grew, was actually all done as give-ups by the FC Stone meat desk. Shout out to Larry and the Stooges, who still call to chat every so often, and have a photo of me with my pink AR-15 hanging in their desk. Good people.) But, the Penson ship is going down, it appears. They were in trouble last year when MF Global happened and were looking to dump their European divisions, and they did bounce a bit after MF Global when they unloaded their Aussie holdings, but it looks like it is all but over for them. The stock is cratering, and there is chatter on the net that they are taking forever to get cash withdrawls out, posted and cleared. That's a very bad sign. MF global was the same way in the weeks before the end. The extreme danger is that the CME is going to do with Penson what they did with MF Global and NOT backstop and keep customers liquid when the end comes. MF Global proved that the CME is no longer going to fulfill its fiduciary duty and will screw clients twelve ways from Sunday without hesitation. DO NOT get caught up in that crap. Just get out of the whole, stinking, festering, putrefied mess. Get out of the markets ENTIRELY. Here is a six month chart on PNSN, which is basically the timeframe since MF Global. Once it broke back under $1.00 in March, it has been Katy-bar-the-door. Strong support at zero. Ugh.
Well that's reassuring :eek:. Again, each person has to do their own due diligence and determine the best course of action for themselves, but if the company my money's with has seen their stock lose 92% of its value over the past year, while other similar brokers have not suffered similar fates, I'd be inclined to get the heck out of Dodge first and ask questions later. But that's me. To each his own. Best of luck to all.
I think what you must have meant to say is that you know you are playing with fire and what you shall see is whether you get burnt. Probably not but who knows?
you're "not in the mood"? umm how would your mood be when a news flash comes onto bloomberg saying pnsn is insolvent and you can't get your money out for who knows how long? this is probably a really bad analogy but anyways...saying you're not in the mood to think about how you're going to protect your financial livelihood is like a general saying he or she is not in the mood to plan a mission. you "may" be playing w/ fire? no - you ARE playing w/ fire. pls don't take my comments the wrong way - i (and we) have all seen companies blow up after the management says they will not blow up. i don't want to see any of my fellow et'ers lose money the stupid way (not b/c of the mkt which can't be prevented but b/c of something that could've been prevented - changing you're clearing firm.)
Frank, I understand. I can't change my clearing firm without changing my broker. Which I don't want to do. As I said before, I only keep enough cash to trade a couple of contracts at a time. The rest comes out on a daily basis. If there is a futures broker out there which is reliable other than IB, I would look at them. I have been with MB Trading for almost 12 years. It is tough to change.
Step 1. Click brokers under elite trader 2. look at all of them 3. go to their website and sign up like facebook 4. wire into your new account after a day for approval No it's NOT hard. My goodness. I'd be fascinated to see what your career performance is (not a provocation).
Interactive Brokers clears with Penson, no? I wonder if trading would even be interrupted were Penson to fail? IB would find another firm to clear with, maybe in the interim we could keep on trading but could not make withdrawals?
IB self clears and the consolidated capital for the intractable brokers group is over $4.8 billion. It has no relationship to pension.