Question - when this process kicks in, is it standard practice for the broker to immediately close any positions at the market, or are any existing positions locked in for however long (weeks, months?) that it takes to resolve everything legally? Likewise for open orders.
Yes and on life support. After two months...odds were increasing fast that I would never awaken or worst. Today I'm ok after rehab...back to normal with minor problems (I now wear glasses, forgot some English, still have creepy dreams)...I'm trilingual. Crazy thing, prior to the illness...was in excellent health, never been ill beyond a common cold and still in my top athletic shape. I never thought about that scenario and foolishly lived a life as if nothing would ever happen while always wondering about the well being of my family & friends. Hard lesson to learn. Never think you're prepared just because you have life & medical insurance with a normal will...so many other things you need to do. wrbtrader
I have suffered a massive heart attack two years ago and my heart even stopped working at one point. When they revived me and I regained consciousness three things popped into my mind: -I was lucky to be alive and felt grateful to the people who saved me -It would have been a real shame if I left my affairs in a mess as they at that time for my girlfriend and family to sort out -I was owed good sums of money that I should have been more diligent collecting. Determined to improve on the situation and to be more prepared I have familiarized my girlfriend with details of my accounts then she was hit by a car! (fortunately she is OK) Now I have more or less everything covered. I do have a very detailed will and a team of trusted people with guidance who are quite clear what needs to be done. To make things simple I instructed my girlfriend, my brother, and a close friend I mentored in trading to rapidly take measures when the time comes before notifying authorities so that the urgent stuff gets taken care of before it gets entangled in legalities. I asked my brother and girlfriend to enter my place and remove valuables. I asked my friend who is familiar with the trading software we use to close positions. My art collection is documented now so it would be easier to sell, donate or otherwise dispose of. Also, I made another close friend who is familiar with art matters to be a co-executor of my will. When it came to collecting money that was owed me I forgave a number of small loans that were slowly poisoning some of my relationships with certain people. As a result, instead of feeling resentful I found myself being totally at peace in my relationships. I have been asked by other people to take part in similar support arrangements for them and I have agreed to do so.
Thanks to all that have added their thoughts to this. What prompted the post is my decision to close my TDA trading account as I simplify my trading. I also am dealing with taking over an elders estate as they fall further into dementia in their early 70s. Consolidating many small accounts takes time when you aren't the account owner... even as a POA. I used to follow a trader about 10 years ago. Long story but he fell into poor health and then one day was gone. He was young... maybe 52. I'm getting closer to that age so my thoughts are on not putting my wife and/or kids through that. Robert is correct... banks/brokerages don't do anything until they know of someone's passing or incapacitation. I learned this after my uncle died... the only one that gets notified quickly by law is social security so they can stop payments correctly. My taxable accounts are all JTWOS and all retirement accounts have spouse or trusts as beneficiaries so that is set. The decision I am making is should I trade in one account that also holds my long term investments (mentally bucket them) OR have 2 accounts so I can separate my trading from my investments (force the buckets). My investments used to be 25 dividend paying companies but I have transitioned much of that into 4 ETFs as I have tired of all the work necessary to follow so many individual companies. This was a positive change to my trading account as I gave myself much more time to focus on my 3 to 5 swing trades I typically manage. Besides these directional trades I typically allocate 20% of account to selling straddles and hedging long positions. I don't trade futures or forex. I don't leverage with margin so I have not switched to portfolio margin but maybe this would benefit me in some way? Does anyone that doesn't leverage with margin see benefits to this? I have yet to make more than 100 equity trades a month (what my broker offers for no commission) so a second account allowing another 100 trades for investments would likely not benefit me too much but won't hurt either. When I was much younger I treated all my accounts like trading accounts so many here may still be in that phase. Are there any older traders (40+) here making or have made the moves I'm working on? I'd love your feedback. I'm certainly not giving up on trading just thinking it is time I let a larger percentage of funds run on less active management. Thanks for reading!
I went through the same thought process and decided that I wanted to separate investments from trading. I ended up with three accounts: (a) for investments, (b) for trading following a structured plan, and (c) for the trading experiments I like to do every now and then. Obviously has each of these accounts a different risk profile.