Does anyone know about the daily SEC fees charged by Tradestation ? Each day my beginning balance is several dollars less than my closing balance of the prior day even though I don't have any overnight positions. Upon questioning the Tradestation folks, they tell me these are SEC fees. I figure they are costing me about $90 / mo in addition to the $100 usage fee charged by Tradestation. I have never seen any mention of SEC fees in TradeStation advertising or in any disclosure. What's the story ?
I have never heard of "daily" SEC fees. I have a TS equities account, and the only SEC fees that they charge me is on the sales of stock, which you can see on the confirmations. It's quite inconvenient to see all the fees only on the monthly statement. TS really should try to provide daily electronic statements when any amount is charged/credited to the account.
As far as I know, ALL brokers charge this fee. The fee is only assessed on sells/shorts. The fee is equal to 1/300 of 1 percent of the cost of the sale. Ex. You sell 100 shares @ 50. The fee is equal to .000033 x $5000 or $0.17 BTW, I think these fees have actually dropped recently and/or will continue to drop . The SEC supposedly has more money than it can handle from the late 90s bull market. Tony
Tony's got it right. The SEC collects a tarriff on every sale you make. TS clears BS so you see the fee on your confirms.
Thanks for your replies. I agree with PXG in that TS should provide electronic daily statements showing ALL amounts debited and credited to one's account. Most other brokers provide an online daily activity report which shows all debits and credits posted each day. TS does a great job of providing daily and historical trade data online, but they fall short in providing online reporting of other financial data. Who knows, maybe its in the next release. Yeah, right.
I have already complained about much of the same thing. By not providing a clear and transparent account of all the transactions, TradeStation can easily slip in a few charges on its customers, which is what they did to me. Trade with TradeStation at your own peril. You can read about my experience with TradeStation at the following thread -- http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5627
TraderC, I think these fees are standard SEC fees. Not certain I would blame TS for this. I used to use an institutional equities desk and got dinged for the same thing. Now, as to TS's reporting...I can't speak for that b/c I don't use TS...but am thinking about it. MYD
Im sure they are not over-charging you. I keep my own Excel worksheet for all my trading activites and fees. I input my daily data at the close every single day and compare it with my firm's report the next day. The numbers are usually correct to within $1...most of the time, within $0.50. SEC charges went up in April to $30.50 for every $1M of sell volume. Easy to calculate on Excel but you have to know what your total sell $$ was for each day (or the week or month) - whatever your firm uses.
MYD: I am not talking about the SEC fees. I am talking about the way TradeStation presents their transaction information online. There is absolutely no way you can figure out on a daily basis exactly how much they are charging you on each transaction, because they don't give you the exact amount of each transaction. Now throw in the commissions, the different ECN fees, and the SEC fees, you have a murky accounting problem that cannot be solved. DayTraderNYC mentions that he has an Excel program that can calculate his fees approximately. Unfortunately, that's not good enough for IRS. I need the exact amounts for my tax return. My aweful experience with TradeStation has more to do with the way they treated me after I discovered a "mistake" of theirs, among the already murky accounting situation. I eventually come to the conclusion that they are trying to use the murky accounting situation to rip off their customers.