We have lots (a really lot) of messaging that deals with various brokers and what is allowed/not allowed by them in terms of buying/selling new issues on the Over The Counter (OTC) markets and many other issues.
For instance some brokers allow pretty much any transaction. I personally like eTrade as I have never had a trade rejected by them–while I have an account with Fidelity it restricts my ability to buy Fixed-to-Floating rate issues.
This area is for an exchange of information on all the various brokers–good, bad and otherwise.
Like all the various discussion pages if folks could ‘stay to topic’ the page will be more valuable to all, but staying to point.
If you want to start a new thread go to the bottom of the page and do a comment–instead of a reply.
Question on final stub period interest payment on baby bond TELZ.
Has anyone / everyone received their stub payment and if so, what brokerage firm are you using ?
The bond was redeemed on Nov 8th and I got my par proceeds in my Vanguard account that day. The interest payment for the prior quarter was previously received on 10/31/24 in the “normal” quarterly amount.
I haven’t yet received the interest I am owed for the period 10/31/24 through and including 11/07/2024. I called Vanguard’s brokerage department and they said there is nothing “in the works” on the transfer agents portal and so they kind of shrugged their shoulders.
I need to go back to Vanguard and have them research more fully but I have to believe I am not the only one missing my payment.
Appreciate any insights.
Same problem with Fido… Nobody can give a straight answer as to why when the prospectus is quite clear that interest ought to be due from the last interest payment date despite being paid a premium for the call price that did NOT include the additional interest…. In fact Fido personnel actually got indignant with me and told me I shouldn’t question him for him having been doing this for 40 years…. Yeah, right….. Another guy tried claiming it had to do with a make whole call which of course this is not…. So I have filed a complaint with the SEC. It’s unfortunate this has to be filed as a complaint vs Fido because I believe the fault is externally generated, but hopefully, since I am not getting any straight answers from Fido, perhaps the SEC can lead me to where a proper explanation as to why no interest was paid OR someone will enforce the language in the prospectus on someone…. The money is inconsequential, but we deserve straight and valid answers rather than people making up their own answers out of thin air and hoping you’ll buy it. SEC says it’ll take 3 weeks or so, and it may not lead to anything other than a comment like “go get a lawyer.”
BTW, the complaint was actually filed at the suggestion of a Fido rep himself, also suggesting SEC was the way to go, not FINRA
My dividend for MTB-J received 9-15-24 shows “non-qualified dividend” by Schwab. Anyone else with Schwab or another broker show it as non-qualified?
I tried emailing Schwab but they claim that is how it was reported. I thought it was to be qualified. Contacting IR at MTB and they only refer me to the prospectus.
The qualified status reported in your transaction history is meaningless and has nothing to do with what will be reported on your 1099-DIV. Don’t waste your time worrying about it.
Have 6 dividend payments today. 5 of the 6 have been posted by Schwab by 3:50 pm. Able to invest in the money market immediately. Schwab is improving. In the past, this rarely occurred.
I on the other hand placed a sell order at Schwab for snoxx at noon, and it didn’t execute as of open the next day. I cancelled and sold sgov instead.
Irish-
I’ve never had a SNOXX order not execute same day after hours. If they screwed up, it’s a big deal. I would call.
Did you place the order on 11/11? That was not a settlement day, so no MMF trades took place.
Fido Update: I was told they rolled back the Market Access limitation and was asked to give it a try. I tried numerous orders for 1000 or 500 shares, all were rejected. I provided this feedback to Fido, we’ll see what they say.
Rocky,
Placed 4 limit orders for CTA-B all filled and booked my capital gain. Not sure if anyone on here picked them up and got a nice solid 6.2% preferred, but I have a feeling I can buy them back sometime next year for less than what I sold.
Ironically, I had no problem placing orders for AFFT, which has less liquidity than others I tried unsuccessfully.
FYI – Fido was supposedly to make changes today to the Market Access order issue we’ve all been experiencing. I tried to place a couple small orders and they all have been rejected. I don’t see any difference. Have a call in to a regional VP for an update.
Hey Rocky, did that info come from a Senior person at Fidelity? I was expecting this issue to be drawn out for months! Thanks.
Hello Maine – He’s a VP on the financial consulting side, so he’s been working with the people up the chain. I don’t know how far up, but when I chat with him last week he said Fidelity heard people like us loud and clear.
I had to call into Fidelity to execute a 100 share trade of SBBA. When I tried to trade it electronically before calling in, it was rejected because of illiquidity. Somewhere a bit north of 22,000 shares traded yesterday on SBBA. The Fidelity representative said this is a huge problem for their group (active trading team?)
It is an odd algorithm they’re using and evidently the issue still exists as of this morning.
I’d never recommend IB to anyone,but sometimes it’s the only place to get a trade done unless you establish an account directly with a clearing firm.
I’ve put that off merely because that come with its own set of problems, namely sipc concerns. You have to hope they properly segregate retail accounts from their prop accounts.
Few years back a trader at Greatpoint blew up the firm with $20 mill loss on a volatility ETN he didn’t understand. Luckily they segregated retail accounts properly. They eventually paid all the proprietary traders back out of future profits, but it took years.
The advantage of proprietary trading is you have whatever leverage the firm wants to give you because your leverage is based on the firms capital x 6.666
Voner I’m on the phone again with them going on 12 min and still not talking to the back office. Gal that answered had never heard of this. She transferred me to an account advisor.
Good indication they are getting overwhelmed they are trying to have the account advisors help out. They are trying to not transfer calls to the back room.
Now starting to get a perverse bit of humor in tying up the phone and the capitol markets desk and the account advisors time.
I wanted to stir the pot further, so I called Fido and asked for ATP support. When I spoke with the first person I said I wanted to talk to a supervisor. After a bit of a wait I spoke with a person directly involved with ATP and the Market Access issue and he sounded frazzled and yet was steadfast that Fido is trying to resolve the problem. What I liked was that he was very frank and completely understood the issues we are facing (it’s causing them issues too). I think they want this resolved as much as we do. No ETA, but I feel like I can wait a little bit longer before moving my account.
I can’t buy 100 shares of EICA at Fidelity without call a representative due to trading limits. I will be moving my account if this situation doesn’t improve. Is anyone else running into this situation?
Fred that was one of many I had the same problem with at Fidelity too.
Fred,
Yes, I trade a lot in illiquid preferreds. FIDO has made it IMPOSSIBLE to do business in these securities. FIDO is the STUDPIDEST broker in the entire country, apparently run by people who have nothing better to do than dream up ways to stop you from trading your securities. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH FIDO unless you want to increase your blood pressure! NO OTHER BROKER IN THE U.S. has such ridiculous rules, so far as I am aware. Today, it took me 25 minutes to enter open sell orders in MITP, although my order was INSIDE THE QUOTED MARKET, thus ADDING liquidity to the market. In other words, FIDO IS DELIBERATELY RESTRICTING MARKET LIQUIDITY IN ILLIQUID STOCKS!!!!!! I’m transferring out all my FIDO accounts and will never do business with them again.
Robert, I can’t figure it out and I’m frustrated but not mad enough to change brokers. I just had a GTC order fill for an old Gridbird special that most days doesn’t show any trades at all, Zero, Nada, Zilch. Then today a whole 923 shares have traded and my order for 200 filled.
I quickly placed 2 more orders .03 and .05 below the latest ask and Fido didn’t block the orders. Go figure.
Charles,
Thanks for your response. Maybe you got lucky, somehow. (But on your post on 11/6, you seemed to be pretty upset with them. Hmmm…maybe you cooled down a little over the weekend?) To each his own. I have already wasted a lot of time with FIDO on this issue. They even rejected an order I tried to place to buy 100 shares for me in another stock! Can you believe it–a 100 share order can be “disruptive to the market.” I’m sure you know this is not the first time for FIDO on restricting or rejecting orders. For years, they didn’t allow online orders in adjustable rate preferreds. Instead, the customer was forced to call in and listen to a canned warning about how risky these securities were. I once tried to tell the rep I had heard it more times than I could count and didn’t need to listen to it again. I offered to say I would consent to saying I knew it and understood it without hearing it again. No dice–an order could only be accepted if the warning was verbally recited every time. Discount brokers are supposed to be for customers who know what they are doing and who accept responsibility for their trades, so what good is FIDO with its nanny-state oversight attitude? FWIW, I would predict they will do it again on some other issue with preferreds in the future and my patience with tolerating their approach is at an end. After all, the majority of preferred issues trade fairly low or even extremely low volume….
Fidelity pays dividends on sweeps account and has fills as good as any so I like that account. I have more than one account so I can trade the low volume nonsense somewhere else. They all have advantages and disadvantages, place transactions wisely.
Update from Fidelity: They say changes are coming on 11/14. May not address all issues and the rep did not have all the details. So we’ll just have to see what they roll out.
They also mentioned possibly using a “market not held” order, but they could not tell me how to do that and I don’t see how to place an order that way on their system. They said they will follow up with me.
Rocky, Can you or anyone post the sub Reddit thread again for complaining about Fidelity? I know people say they are monitoring this site. I am usually a patient person, but tonight I have had it. I tried to place 2 GTC sell orders and multiple times I had the message my order is exceeding the amount of shares allowed. I am not going to mess with playing wack a mole and try different amounts. I will just wait til pre-market or market open and call the active trader desk. But I still want to post to others my displeasure with Fidelity.
Here is my concern. One of my sell orders recently that I had to call the active trader desk to place I wanted to lower my offer price. I didn’t want to change the amount of shares. That is when that silly warning popped up that I was over the maximum amount of shares allowed.
I am not part of the QAnon conspiracy group, but after this happened I began to wonder if this trade is real or just something the Fidelity backroom fabricated to show in my account and isn’t a real trade.
So call me crazy, but this question entered my mind.
Hello Charles – I think we’re all flabbergasted by this nonsense. I will admit though that I am a conspiracy theorist!! LOL!!
I’ll be eager to see what they roll out on 11/14.
And what is the deal with posting a link? My posts never show up if I include a link.
Rocky, on hold right now to place a buy and sell order with Andrew while he’s talking to the “back room” going on 20 min.
Remember the song “The times they are A changin”? Should be renamed trades they are a changing 🙂
I’m leaning in the direction that I really need to be sure I want to own something in case the market blows up.
BTY 23 minutes to finish the 2 trades. Andrew asked if I was set up and he could leave or stay until I finished. Told him stay. I wanted to tie him up to add to the hours they are taking to deal with this kind as a message to them. He said they are really busy right now.
Just in case you’re interested I no longer feel comfortable holding any preferred or notes of MREIT’s for the next year. Just my personal bias. My Ouija board is saying long term rates higher for longer which is never good for the housing market and long term loans. When rates are stable or trending down is when you want to be in that sector of the market.
Thanks for that Charles. Even before this Fidelity debacle I’ve noticed almost all my preferred positions have become very illiquid. So for better or worse, I’ve been buying some income ETFs. Not really my style but at least most are liquid and you get the diversification too. We’ll see how that goes. Good for you to take up Fido’s time. It’s egregious what they’ve done.
Charles , an aside from having worked in a “back office”
it’s where they hide the ugly people
LT that’s probably where I would be, doing the grunt work is never appreciated until management realizes how important the work you do is.
Charles,
try this link for Reddit and Fidelity:
https://www.reddit.com/r/fidelityinvestments/?rdt=41532
I had to get a market window opened on an illiquid share this morning and I had the representative ask the trader if they had been told anything new and it was the same story we had yesterday and the day before…. Promises promises….
We should generate a subtitle at reddit and all complain there
Charles and others:
Unfortunately, this is just Fidelity. They apparently have one or more Harvard lawyers that have nothing better to do than sit around all day dreaming up ways to “protect” customers from themselves by restricting their ability to do business. (Remember the ridiculous policy that Fidelity had FOR YEARS about prohibiting the entry of online orders in adjustable rate preferreds because they were too risky? So customers had to call in to FIDO and sit through the reading of some stupid disclaimer about how risky
ARP’s were. EVERY time you wanted to place an ARP order, you had to listen to the same disclaimer. They wouldn’t even let you assume responsibility because you’d heard the disclaimer a thousand times!!!) Just FIDO arrogance and disdain for its customers. No other broker I know of has such stupid, nanny-state policies as FIDO, but that’s who they are. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for them to change, either….Somehow, it never enters their brains that, if this policy is required by law, why does NO OTHER BROKER have the same policies??
Just got a voicemail from Fidelity. He said they are listening their customers and there may be changes coming concerning the Market Access nonsense. Have not returned his call, but will fill you in once I do.
Rock, the most serious thing I see is a sell order. Not sure if it’s your concern, but for me sitting on the phone waiting to speak to someone to place a order in this day and age is ridiculous.
BTY I looked at Reddit and read comments about how they have changed since MS bought them.
FWIW…
I spoke to Fidelity “active trader team“ representative this morning once again getting a market window opened to initiate a trade. I put the call in a few minutes after the market opened and I waited about five minutes to get a representative from the “active trading team” This time the representative was a older gentleman who seem to be very experienced and was willing to chat about this liquid trading situation at Fidelity.
He said That “upper management” at Fidelity is discussing the situation with FINRA. He said that “opening market window“ is putting a burden cetain human resources at Fidelity. He said when we call in and ask him to open a market window he has to go over and get a OK from his supervisor and then call the trading floor and negotiate with them and then it doesn’t always work right so they have to go and try it all again and again. He says it’s pretty frustrating on thier end also. He said that in the past he might get a request open the market window once a month and he said now it’s happening three or four times a week. He mentioned that they are aware of the complaints from customers from monitoring social media sites. FWIW.
Since this issue is being discussed on the “sandbox” page and this page, I’m making this duplicate post….
FWIW… I had a Fidelity representative today tell me that you call to have a market order window opened ask for the “active trader team”.
he said that internally they’ve decided that this would be a more efficient way to process these orders because they’ve seen an uptick in their personel resource usage trying to deal with with these market window orders.
FWIW…
Does anyone do business with Etrade and use their trading platforms? I really don’t trade that much, what I’m looking for is similar to how I use Active Trader Pro, so basically for monitoring my holdings plus custom watch lists.
Also, do you know if they are limiting order placement like Fidelity with the silly Market Access rules?
One problem with E*trade is their cash sweep rates that max out at 0.15%. About like Schwab.
Somewhat surprisingly, my complaint to the SEC about Fidelity’s new practice of limiting trading in low volume stocks did elicit a response from Fidelity. Not surprisingly, it was not a satisfying answer. I wonder if Fidelity will now fire me as a customer.
“On behalf of Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC (“FBS” or the “Firm), I am responding to your request dated October 17, 2024, regarding the above-referenced matter. In a submission to your office, an FBS customer, Steven XXX (“Mr. XXX”), expresses displeasure over Firm controls designed to prevent potentially, disruptive, fraudulent, and/or manipulative trading in low volume and/or low-priced securities. We have carefully researched this matter and present our findings below. We can confirm that FBS’s above-mentioned controls, which are not implemented arbitrarily and comply with all laws, regulations and rules — including SEC Rule 15c3-5– applicable to its industry, can, in fact, involve limiting the share quantity of an order for certain low volume and/or low-priced securities if it is greater than a certain average trade size. We respectfully disagree with Mr. XXX’s statement that there is no risk of disruptive, fraudulent, and/or manipulative trading if a limit order is used, but nevertheless thank him for his feedback that he is transferring assets to another brokerage firm that may not employ similar controls. We trust that you find this information responsive to your inquiry; however, should you have any further questions or require any additional information, please contact me directly.”
Thank you for sharing. Earlier today I sent them a similar nasty-gram.
A few points regarding the unhappiness with Fidelity:
1) Preferred/baby traders like III’ers that trade individual securities are maybe .0001% or at most .01% of broad-based investors. Point being an insignificant number trading an insignificant dollar amount of zero commission shares.
2) Fidelity lives in fear of any investor in any security coming back and saying: “Fidelity should NOT have let me buy/sell XYZ” which is why they restrict trading for many assets. Specifically, regarding illiquid prefs/babys, they fear “poor” fills even if you are using limit orders.
3) Social media makes it infinitely easier for small investors to publicize negative comments. Just post it on X(Twitter), TikTok, Facebook, etc. so many other folks see it. Fidelity monitors many of these, but my assumption is that they do NOT have anyone assigned to monitor here on III.
4) If you want to complain in a public area, I suggest the Fidelity subreddit. They have reps monitoring that site and replying in ~ real time.
5) Fidelity publicly will say they love all customers and do not want to see anyone leave. Privately they are happy to have some customers leave. They have “fired” some substantial 8 figure customers in the past. Paraphrasing: “You are not happy with us, we are not happy with you, you have 30 days to close this account.”
6) If the unhappiness reaches a high enough level inside Fido, the conversation will be if they are better off keeping these customers or letting them walk. Unknowable which way the decision will go.
Disclosure: Not associated with Fidelity in any capacity, other than managing some accounts held there.
Tex I e-mailed my Fidelity rep. He said FINRA is responsible, they just updated their market access rule. He said contact their risk monitoring program and make your case to them.
He is saying Fidelity doesn’t want to deal with regulatory risk and fines.
he posted this 800 # 877-907-4429 to contact a rep to open a trading window for 5 minutes saying you can place as many trades as possible.
Good luck on getting more than one in.
He gave me links to the FINRA sites. Sounds to me more like pass the buck or wack a mole if you want to try.
For now I am trying to live with this and as another person pointed out, hope a market event doesn’t take me by surprise.
Throughout history there has been a record of building enclosures to funnel animals in the direction the hunter wanted them to go.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/19/1232527640/by-accident-scientists-found-an-underwater-megastructure-from-the-stone-age
I feel like I am being treated as part of the herd.
I sent this note to both Fidelity and the SEC “I’m writing to tell you why I’ve initiated transfer of securities from Fidelity to another broker. I don’t want to do this; you have better fills and better account administration. However, Fidelity has instituted new market access rules that are harmful to both investors and the companies in which we invest. I can no longer freely buy and sell securities in many low volume preferred names. You now limit buys and sells to some percentage of the average daily volume. This applies to all orders – including limit orders. This was purportedly done in the name of risk management. While there may be some rational for limiting volume on market orders, there is no legitimate risk management purpose to curtail trades with the use of limit orders. A limit order will not fill without both a willing buyer and a willing seller. Fideltiy’s actions harm both investors and companies by preventing free trade in their securities. I do not believe that the SEC intends this kind of curtailment in the name of risk management so I am going to send them a copy them of this note.”
So Steve, I agree that it’s terrible and I’ve bumped up against it and didn’t quite figure it out before moving on to something else.
Where are you going to transfer to? IBKR?
As I’m sure you know, until recently Fidelity required a phone call to trade FtF securities. I opened an account with TDA as a means of working around that restriction. So now I’m moving ten of the lowest volume names to them – now Schwab. I’m not a real fan of Schwab, as I said in the note I do generally like Fidelity; but their risk management practices are silly. All brokers have pluses and negatives; I’ve tried IBKR twice but just don’t like their interfaces. If I find a broker that better suits my needs I may move again.
Steve- I love the note. For me, Fidelity offers the best solution for pref investors. With that said, each factor has it’s own weighting and I tend not to run into the (low volume) issue that much, at least not lately.
Like you said, the Fidelity execution is the best, no cash sweep headache like schwab, no fee for OTC names, and access to some expert market names.. and good muni access.
With all that said, I have accounts at many brokerages.. but I do dream of consolidating for simplicity sakes. Again, I admire you taking the time to provide that feedback to Fidelity- that rule is silly.
I’m switching from Fidelity also; however, due to another issue. Fidelity did some changes to the online site that no longer allows me access to the research pages and option screens. I use a MacBook Air with Catalina operating system and Fidelity no longer allows full access with that system. I am not able to upgrade to a newer operating system due to the age of the computer. I know my computer works with IBKR and Schwab and will be switching to one of them.
Is this just a Safari issue? Did you try installing Firefox? That seems easier than changing brokers.
Thanks for the suggestion. I down loaded Firefox and it works. Too bad the Fidelity tech help did not suggest it. Thanks again from a non tech savy guy. You saved me from going through the trouble of switching brokers.
Palemooner, I am in exactly the same situation as you. A 2013 Macbook air running Mohave. The problem is not fidelity but the age of your operating system (and computer). Are you using Safari? If so, switch to Firefox or Chrome. Everything in the Fidelity Site works fine with these browsers. If you are using Active Trader Pro, it’s just time for a new computer.
KirkProf….. Personally I would not use an older computer such as your Macbook Air running Mojave for any financial transactions. Apple dropped support for Mojave back in 2021. Your 2013 Macbook will not run any OS Apple still supports either. Apple is pretty good at issuing updates to the OS systems they support for security reasons. Since Mojave has been dropped you aren’t getting these updates. Your Macbook is more susceptible to being hacked and taken over by the hacker. Once my Apple computers are unable to run the later OS packages (usually the CPU speed gets them) and the current OS is no longer supported I put them out to pasture and get a new one, even thought the old one still works. It is just as bad with Windows based machines also. However the Windows machines I own often die before they Microsoft system ages out. My Apple machines easily outlast the Windows machines…….
KirkProf–would agree with everything you say–always use Chrome on a PC and never have problems–other than the issue of Fidelity having interest blips too often.
Tim, I am not real happy with Google right now. I have a 4yr old Moto G plus and a Chrome book. I actually have 2 Moto’s now. One that is 4yrs old and one I just bought used from someone selling it as almost new. Probably been sitting in a stock drawer as it still had the film on the glass.
The story is my phone shows that 47 of 64 G is used and in trying to transfer the data to the new phone it says I also have used 13G of 15G of Google drive storage. Google is threatening and I take it as a threat, that if I don’t buy more Drive storage in the cloud it says my g-mail will quit working.
Yeah it’s only $2.00 a month but I bet it wants access to my bank account which I don’t like doing. Also it’s the principle of the thing, I am getting tired of every company wanting a subscription.
The odd thing is I have Google drive turned off on the phone and I keep getting asked if I want to turn it on to backup photos and files and I keep saying no. The phone system says I have it turned off yet they are saying I have used 13G ??
Maybe the Chrome book? but it’s supposed to have 250 G of internal storage also.
Hello Charles. Without being able to look at your phone or laptop it’s hard to say, but there are some things you can do. First of all, go through your phone and delete any app you don’t want/need. It’s outrageous that the phone comes with all these apps no one wants or needs, but that’s just the way it is. Some apps that are native to Android you won’t be able to uninstall, but you can disable them so they don’t run and take up memory and CPU. I have a Moto One 5g ACE and I’ve disable all of the following:
Android Auto, Assistant, AT&T Cloud, AT&T Smart Wifi, Calendar, Camera Tuner, Chrome (I use Opera Mini), CQATest, Demo Mode, Device Health Services, Device Help, Device Unlock, Digital Wellbeing, Drive, Duo, Gmail, Google, Google Partner Setup, Google Play Movies & TV, Google Play Services for AR, Google Play Store (enable when needed), GOT:Conquest, Infinite, Moto, Moto Facebook, Moto Gametime, Moto Remote Config, Moto Notifications, Photos, Setup & Transfer, Speech Services by Google, Styles and Wallpaper, Visual Voicemail, Youtube, and Youtube Music.
With that said, you’ll need to look at your storage and see what is taking up all the space to determine exactly why you’re running out of space.
Also, any time you download an app Google Play Store seems to download additional apps like games, so occasionally review your apps and see if any of this nonsense can be deleted.
Thanks Rocky, I think I will start with the One Drive. I bought a couple flash drives today for backup, I paid the equivalent to 6 months for what they want to charge for a 64G.
I need to get that down so their threat of locking up Gmail once I reach the 15G limi doesn’t happen.
Steve,
Thank you; I support you 100%!
I have the same problem with FIDO and called them up today to bitch and gave the rep an earful. Bottom line: he became real frosty and said he would understand if I took my business elsewhere. FIDO is like GM: in 1950, it was the largest private company in the U.S., with more than 750,000 employees, and hundreds of thousands of other workers who depended on GM’s business for their livelihoods. Arrogance, sclerosis, disregard for customers, etc., over the ensuing decades finally made them a shell of what they once were. FIDO has, as you and others pointed out, a history of acting “holier and smarter than thou” with respect to its customers. Who knows whether the fate of GM is in store for FIDO……I did find out a few things about this rule from the FIDO rep, FWIW. The rule is supposedly “Exchange Act Rule 15(c)3-5” (or maybe 3.5). But the apparent reason it’s affecting FIDO customers only (as far as I can tell so far) is because the operational definition is an INTERPRETATION by FIDO, and as is their wont, FIDO in its usual practice, ARBITRARILY defines the implementation in a super-strict way, so as to “protect” customers (from their own stupidity??? HA!). Conclusion: FIDO will do whatever the F*** it wants, and if customers don’t like it, FIDO is fine with taking your business elsewhere. And I admire your willingness to complain. But I have NEVER had any satisfaction from complaints with ANY government or regulatory securities organization. Sadly, I think they, too, can do whatever they want with no effective oversight of them available and never any consequences for wrong or stupid decisions. We consumers are at their mercy……
Steve, Maine, Rocky, Yield hunter, 4:00am West coast time and I am trying to set up some buys and sells before the market opens. That makes it 7:00 East coast. Fidelity is making my blood pressure rise. I tried to move up the sell price on a limit order that already exists and the warning pops up I am over the share limit. Another sell order I tried to place popped up about the limit on shares when I tried to sell all so I cut it in half and it went through. Then I tried to place a limit sell order on the other half. Wouldn’t let me Grrrr !#* not in the mood to mess around with trying different amounts.
Know what is a real joke? the limit sell price is $3.00 above the closing price. That warning about being outside the bid / ask range didn’t pop up because there is already 2 other ask orders showing higher than mine.
Then to add insult, I tried to set a buy limit order and it said I was over the number of shares allowed!! can you believe that?
Yesterday’s volume on this BB was over 7,000 shares and not being traded after market it’s showing 0 shares so I suspect there is an algorithm blocking the order.
The messages that keep popping up say to call. This so they can charge a commission to enter an order for you? Does calling even help?
Charles – I’ve spoken to Fidelity too many times. on this. I’ve been told they compare your order quantity to the average of the trailing 20-day volume. I had been perfectly happy with Fido until this restrictive policy was instituted. I am moving a large chunk of my portfolio to Etrade.
Charles, you are not alone. Tried to sell a preferred yesterday as a test of the new rules – Number of shares I offered was less than those available at the bid price. Aware of issues others are having, I set my price at the bid. There was essentially a market out there for my preferred – a bid price offered and a number of shares wanted for what I had to sell. No luck. Got locked out by the new algo. Could not even enter the order.
The long term risk for an investor is if volume falls on an issue and you don’t notice, you may be locked into a position by the new algo. I have a number of small issues preferred and otherwise. I don’t check volume. The only “market manipulation” here is being done by the broker and the SEC.
Whatever saving you get on free commission or a nice cash sweep can get wiped out by the nonsensical new trading limits. JMO. DYODD.
Just another example, I put an order in premarket for 400 KTH at Fido no problem. Late in the day, I tried to REDUCE the order to 300 shares and raise the price…. Algo said that was above the limit of shares I could enter. So instead I had to put in a new order for only 200…… both were stink bids not expected to execute.
Bear – Although highly inefficient and time-consuming, you can call to “override” the MA5008 / MA5011 restrictions. Note, however, they will only grant a five minute window in which you can enter the order.
2WR – I have learned that when attempting to cxl/replace or change an existing limit order, the “algo” calculates both the existing order and the new order toward the allowable ratio of order quantity to 20-day avg vol.
I have had a daily frustration Fidelity with this algorithm change on the illliquid shares. I keep calling and getting five minute market windows opened (warning- Keep that representative on the phone until the trade order completes, because I’ve had the window be closed numerous times even though it’s not five minutes). I do not think the algorithm is straightforward and it is obvious no internal communication within Fidelity has occurred as to how the calculation is made.
I was told by one rep to call into the “Alternative Investments Desk” as they are more experienced and helpful, so I have been doing that and I did get a hold of a representative who was a “trader” and I explained in detail some examples I had encountered about the frustration. Anyway, he said that because he was a “trader” his input would have more sway with the code writers at Fidelity and he wrote up a very detailed ticket. We both came to the agreement that the only way Fidelity’s going to change if affected customers start sucking up their help resources by requesting market Windows to be opened. The higher up the “representative” ladder you can get, the better…
well, that is my story up this point …FWIW
I’ve heard nothing back from Fidelity or the SEC. I don’t expect to ever hear back from the Feds but I do expect a response from Fido. I did move 9 large (for me) low volume positions to my Schwab account. It was smooth and fairly quick. I plan to move an additional number of positions that could pose a problem. Once Fidelity makes a decision it’s nigh impossible to get it reversed. Along with EarlyBird, I’ve had feedback that e-trade might be a good alternative.
The angle that might help is that this policy is harming the free trade of securities for a lot of companies. There is no concern for us an investors, but the companies involved should be concerned that trade in their already low volume shares is negatively impacted.
I think others have mentioned this but to experience it is kind of a shock. I tried to sell some shares of a preferred I own, had 2000 shares. There were 1800 shares on the bid so I put in a market order for all 2000 shares. Rejected. Put in an order for 1000 shares (again, with 1800 on the bid), rejected. Put in an order for 500 shares. Rejected. Finally got some fills with 100 share limit orders, but still was getting rejected sometimes with literally 1 share sell limit orders.
Called Fido and they were able to get the remaining position sold. What a cluster. If you’re a Wall St. firm or trader you can trade 500 times a second. If you a small fry like us here, well, we have different rules for you! This is utterly ridiculous.
Many of my preferred positions have increasingly become illiquid. So I’m considering lightening up on these holdings. If today were a “market event” day and I wasn’t able to get execution thru ATP and had to call to get this done, who knows what I would have ended up with? Oh wait, I know, it’s the short and stinky end of the stick.
Schwab=McDonalds? Did not realize that ~100 Schwab offices are franchises, NOT owned by Schwab. They are having a webinar to recruit more owners:
From Schwab announcement:
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Schwab’s Independent Branch Services, launched in 2011, has grown to nearly 100 branches and $100 billion in AUM, becoming a cornerstone of Schwab’s retail growth. This webinar explores how entrepreneurial financial advisors have harnessed this model to build and scale their own businesses, extending Schwab’s reach into underserved markets.
Join us to hear from Schwab franchise owners who took a leap of faith and found success. Their experiences will offer actionable insights for advisors considering new opportunities.
***************************************************************************
For the record, we have NO affiliation with Schwab past, present or future.
I live in a city that is too small to support a Schwab corporate office, so it’s nice to at least have a franchise office that can provide some in person services. They do seem much more sales-y, half way to DA Davidson (not surprising since that’s where the franchisee came from).
Oddly, I offered to make that franchisee my “financial consultant” so she would get the AUM credit from Schwab, but she wasn’t interested unless I signed up for some advice product. A stockbroker turning down free money ?!?
Schwab – It’s getting more and more difficult for me to have any trust in Schwab’s record keeping . Today they have me wiped out on TECTP with a market value of $0.10/share.. They have my cost basis on AQNB @ $8.31/share when the historical low on it seems to be about 21 approx, cost basis on CUBI-F @ 25.30 even though my actual cost on 26.4% of the shares I own being 11.89. EBBNF and EBBGF I bot for free… and all I have to do to fix this call them, talk to different people giving me different answers as to why this is happening and spend my time filling out forms to fix their mistakes. It pains me to know I haven not yet looked at EVERY issue I own to see just how screwed up the rest of my tax basis costs might be. I also wonder how long it will take for them to figure out the actual cost basis I’m supposed to have now on J and AMTM after the spin-off as they say I got AMTM for free and my cost basis on J is 146.05 when my actual cost is 58.37.
Here’s a new one. At Fidelity I tried to buy 200 shares of SB-D and the roder was rejected. igher than the maximum size allowed. Was able to submit two 100 share orders.Odd.
https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/guidance/reports/2022-finras-examination-and-risk-monitoring-program/market-access-rule
Orders that exceed 5% of the average volumes of the last 30 days are rejected.
I got the same error today trying to trade at Fidelity. It was sell orders (day only and limit). Is this a new thing? Would this be the same for every broker?
I skimmed the link you attached and I didn’t see the 5%, 30 day thing you mentioned.
I got the same error messages trying to trade today at Fidelity and only when I was revising a good to cancel sell order on KTH and it got rejected. eventually I got on the phone with Fidelity and found someone familiar with trading preferred shares and they claimed they opened a “trade window” for me to use one time only but it really didn’t work either. Eventually we got some cludge to work where I broke the sell order into three 100 share orders… they said it was due to that that FINRA rule, but they could not convince me that they knew what they were talking about.
something changed between yesterday and today. I did the exact same sell revision on KTH yesterday and had no issues.
Buongiorno Dick, I’m writing from Italy.
This is the explanation that my italian broker gave. In all the previous years it had never happened to me that an order was refused.
Martin
Ran into the same issue…
Turns out there is a SEC reg that an order cannot exceed 5% of the stock’s daily trading average (over some time period)
Westie, why does it sound like someone sitting high up above the clouds is looking down and seeing all that is going on and has some concern that they decided they need to flip some circuit breakers in place to regulate the flow of trades?
This feels like some Darwin-esque stuff. Protect us from ourselves.
I say get rid of all the warning labels (restrictions) and let nature sort it out.
Who do these rules benefit? Hedge funds? Market manipulators? They certainly don’t seem to be geared towards the average investor.
On a Schwab note….. I’m tired of having to place sell orders for MM funds in order to purchase something. I’ve missed out on better pricing because of the extra step I have to take.
I do like having 2 brokerages (fidelity is my other). Any recommendations on other brokerages? I know every one has it’s + / -. Are there other brokerages that allow buy orders without having to sell MM first (automatic sweeps)?
But who can? I see a bid and ask of 100 + amounts even though it won’t accept mine over a certain level
Fidelity’s new risk management rules are going to be a real problem for low volume preferred stocks and ETD. I own 3500 shares of EFC-D. The 30 day average volume is 2850 shares. Fidelity will now allow me to trade 310 shares a day because of some phantom market access concern. That’s 11 DAYS to close the position. I talked to two different reps and told them that I was going to move my accounts if this is the new normal. The response was to call them and see if they can open a one time market access window to buy or sell. I’m not going to do that. I’ve segregated ten issues that will pose this problem and moved them to a new account that I will transfer to Schwab. So far, they do not have the same impediment. All future low volume issues will go into the Schwab account.
Should’ve said EFC-E. Typing too fast.
I ran into that on the buy side and just placed two orders instead of one. I don’t know if that would work on the sell side. Biggest problem is knowing where the cut-off amount is.
I assume every broker will eventually do the same thing since I doubt Fidelity came up with this on their own. As long as you can use multiple orders to accomplish the same thing then it all works out in the end. But it is a pain in the butt.
Just posted a rant above. Same thing happened to me. It’s infuriating.
Jacobs/Amentum Spin-Off – I’m curious as to how other brokers are dealing with this regarding what they are advising their clients who own J. Schwab basically is not telling their clients anything about this in advance… that seems surprising as I would suspect many shareholders who do not pay close attention to their holdings will be blindsided by the dramatic change is price to come for J once the spinoff takes place on Sept 27.
From Schwab rep – “The info I looked over stated that this was a merger/ spin off and expected to close on or around 9/27. This will be processed automatically with no action needed on your part. The date may vary depending on completion of the merger. The most up to date info would be available on the investor relations portion of the company’s website. The rate is 1:1.
“We do not notify clients of mandatory mergers, this info is available via news on the stock.”
https://invest.jacobs.com/news/news-details/2024/Jacobs-Solutions-Announces-Record-Date-and-Distribution-Date-for-the-Spin-Off-of-Its-Critical-Mission-Solutions-and-Cyber–Intelligence-Government-Services-Businesses/default.aspx
Looking for advice from the group: I have roughly 200+ stock tickers that I follow and had been using the free Yahoo Finance website. They recently “upgraded” to something they call 2.0.
It is more like 0.2 !!! The website now runs crazy slow and frequently times out on both Foxfire and Chrome browsers.
Looking for a new site to use to track current prices on tickers. Sadly, Fidelity Brokerage only allows 50 tickers on their Watchlist feature AND they don’t allow imports from CSV of the tickers.
I am considering Seeking Alpha “basic” (free) but only the Premium Seeking Alpha allows ticker imports
Thanks in advance for ideas/guidance
Mike, you can setup all of those tickers using a Google Sheet. You do have to have a free Google account. I have used them for up to about 1,000 tickers, so handling your 200 should not be a problem. Their format for preferreds is just XYZ-A. IIRC the quotes are 20 minute delayed during trading hours, so if you need real time info it is not a perfect solution. It is also easy to download all of the data if you want to do something else with it. I do not use it on a regular basis but it has been reliable when checked. And since it is in spreadsheet format, you can import all of your tickers in a CSV file.
Every once in a while, I check high-low-close prices from multiple data sources on the same day. Always find differences, usually minor, but they have never matched up 100%. I use Google data when I do that comparison.
Here is a link that helps explain how to set it up:
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en
Tex – Re: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=en I rest my case…. LOL
2WR, come on in, the water is fine! They have a couple of examples at the bottom of the page that you can copy directly into a Google Sheet, Even if you do not want to set this up, using your old Excel would revolutionize your day!
Every single friend, and there are a lot them, that got their knees replaced say “I wish I had done this 5 years ago.” Once we get you over the first spreadsheet hurdle, you will say the same thing!
Compared to bond math that you do in your head, it is a piece of cake. . .
Google Finance is kind of maddening in that it mostly works, but there are certain not very obscure tickers that they refuse (?) to add, e.g. ASBA, MFICL, OXLCN. I hate having exceptions in my spreadsheets.
To Tex, David, et al….thanks for the input, I will pursue the Google Sheets route !
You can do this in Excel. Some of the ticker symbols can be a little tricky but it can be done.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-stock-quote-e5af3212-e024-4d4c-bea0-623cf07fbc54#:~:text=With%20the%20cells%20still%20selected,tab%2C%20and%20then%20click%20Stocks.&text=will%20appear.,stocks%20you%20might%20pick%20Price.
NTT, you can only do this with Excel365, the cloud based version, and it will not work on all of the local versions on PC’s/Mac’s. 2WR has a local version Excel 2016 IIRC, so it would not work for him. This is an ongoing effort to convert 2WR and others into spreadsheet users. Warren Buffet and them do not think investors need to use spreadsheets. And their records speaks for themselves!
UPDATE: after some searching on Reddit, I found out that the old “classic” version of Yahoo Finance stock ticker tracker is still being used in the Canadian version of Yahoo Finance. I have no idea if/when that website will get the forced migration to the dreaded 2.0 that US is now on.
So just use this address to access the Canada Yahoo and it works great !
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/
Does anyone else have a problem with Schwab and dividends? They are often wrong in identifying whether dividends are qualified or not on my accounts. For example they treat CODI-A as not qualified and ATLCZ as qualified. Both are wrong. Maybe, they need a new magic 8 ball.
This happens at every brokerage. The classification in the account history comes from a third party service and is often wrong. It has nothing to do with what ultimately appears on your 1099-DIV. Just ignore it and look at the payer’s website, or consult their IR department.
Per Schwab rep, there was a system update done last weekend; one may not see open orders that were entered over 14 days ago in Schwab website. Issue is only applicable to accounts accessible via Thinkorswim. All orders are visible in the ToS platform. They are working on resolving issue.
One should be able to see all open orders in Schwab website for accounts accessible through StreetSmartEdge.
Schwab – Schwab Reports Strong Net New Asset Growth. The Stock Is Rising according to Barrons – https://www.barrons.com/advisor/articles/charles-schwab-stock-price-net-new-assets-0e7cdf6e.
My question is how do they know they have net new assets when they can’t keep track of existing assets? Today at the end of the day when I log in to the website, it tells me my accounts are +6,661 on the day… When I check TOS it tells me overall P/L on the day is (-7,983). The website spits out a total value of my accounts, TOS does not….. So am I up or am I down? I’m sure not confident I or they know… So are Schwab’s Net New Assets REALLY up or are they down? Based on today and prior recent experiences, I sure wouldn’t bet they have their numbers right………… and I’m certainly not anywhere near a mentality of adding ANY net new asset to Schwab…..
2WR you think that is a problem? I don’t know if I am overdrawn on my MM trading account at Fido. It shows a total balance but says it can’t show the balance of funds not linked to open bids. I transferred money from another fund to cover just in case I am short.
Sounds like the opposite of the problem Schwab creates for all of us by not automatically transferring new cash to a MM…. I checked in this AM to see what dividends collected etcs and noticed sufficient amount to transfer out of cash into SWVXX. I checked again at the end of the day and discover they credited more from a called bond that I owned both there and at Fido… Fido credited the called issue first thing this morning if not earlier, but Schwab didn’t get around to it until some time late in the day and I didn’t check in early enough to catch it to begin the move process…. By doing this Schwab captures an extra day of paying no interest at my expense or is it two? Just minor aggravations that one occurs at Schwab but not elsewhere.
That’s why I’ve moved from Schwab to Fido. Everything works smoothly there. This is the 3rd time I’ve left Schwab in the last 40+ years. I hope this time’s a charm. I’m getting too old for it.
JMO
2WR, Fidelity “shadow posts” payouts to their account before the market opens. For example if you log into their website after last Friday at midnight, it showed most all of the dividends, interest and principal payments planned for today (Monday). If they do NOT receive the payment, they will reverse it before they close the books, say at 8PM Eastern. So you look at your account during regular trading hours and think you have the funds and do something like transferring them out, only to find out you created a margin balance. Which gets real interesting in non-margin accounts. And yes, it has happened to accounts we manage.
Schwab used to do the opposite. They waited until they got the funds from DTC into the account before posting it, sometimes after regular trading hours. I think they might have changed this year and seem to post a lot of payments earlier. I am not sure if they are shadow posting or actually improved the flow from DTC.
Camroc, Fidelity has a beyond belief, beyond third world problem with one of the accounts we manage. Can’t provide details, but everybody would be aghast. And we are not talking about a steak dinner or two. This account is substantial with dedicated private this and fancy that support supposedly.
Which makes me conclude that there are NO perfect brokerages. . .
Schwab still does not shadow post. They used to post everything after the close (even if they had the funds the day before), but now they post throughout the day.
My opinion is Fidelity has enough people that eventually you can get your problem corrected. Schwab does not , and they make a lot more than a day’s interest when something pays off …at least for most people who don’t check their account 5x daily. It’s a ripoff and I only keep an account there because they violate Blue Sky and let me buy a lot of bonds no other broker will permit.
LT – can you elaborate on types of bonds you can purchase at Schwab?
Most people won’t run into the problem I have where many new issue bonds are not blue-sky’d in Nevada due to the state’s size. It’s typically on the list with Puerto Rico and small states. So, even a AAA housing bond from another state typically cannot be purchased through any other broker.
Nothing fancy, and the state regulator has told be they would not enforce the statute on AA/ AAA bonds.
Thanks! I am always on the lookout for a new fixed income hack to access the good stuff. Us retail investors need to stick together, can be tough out there!
Actually, we have a competitive advantage (compared to the big guys) because we can buy the small odd lot issues, the ones that tend to offer compelling value when someone needs out. Now in terms of access, that’s a diff story.. but I currently have 4 brokers in order to cast a wide net and get the best access possible for a retail schlepp!
2WR
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2024/08/30/schwab-used-cash-sweep-funds-to-purchase-td-ameritrade-lawsuit/
schwab is being sued about some of its customer cash management activities
2WR, On no day since my transfer from TDA, which was on May 10, has my Schwab balance been correct. Within minutes of the market close every day my account goes down by thousands, no matter what was profited that day. Some holdings get repriced at $0. It cannot seem to get some of the illiquid preferred’s proper market prices correct, especially after market close. For some reason, prices go haywire beginning at 4:00 pm eastern. My workflow is not affected as everything is kept track of via Excel spreadsheet, but it is pretty frustrating. that problem and the tardiness of funds from matured/called bonds and CDs are my biggest complaints about Schwab. Today was big maturity day for me, a CD and 2 Canadian bonds. I received the bond proceeds at 1:00 easter today and the CD a few hours after closing. The Bonds were called as of yesterday. Some instances are no matter as I haven’t dictated yet where the proceeds will go, but sometimes I have, and I’m sitting and waiting with the potential of missing out. Especially in the illiquid world I live in as opportunities often slip by pretty quick. All those words and I think, still, I like Schwab ok enough not to leave. Not exactly a vote of confidence I know, but I think it’s because I have that spreadsheet which holds my fire somewhat.
Oooooooooh, you used that word that is so scary to me – SPREADSHEET! lol
2WR, I am going to start a GoFundMe account to buy you and Grid PC’s with the latest version of Excel 365! I bet we can raise the money in a nanasecond!!!! Gonna be an adventure and you will become a spreadsheet guru to add to your bond guru designation!
Well gosh, Tex, I’m humbled by your willingness to pay it forward for poor old little me and Grid…. I can’t speak for him, though I suppose I could but I have my brand spanking new, fully up to date Excel 2016 MSO Version 2408 on my machine already…. And if I were to update (not upgrade imho) to a Win 11 machine, I’d have a brand spanking new, fully up to date version of Excel 365 thanks to your generosity and it would hold the same place of honor on my How-To-Do list as this version does………… I’ve always had Excel accessibility but Ive always found it as intimidating as calculus…. and snakes…..
2WR, you are set! You are better off with an older version of Excel instead of the latest. They keep adding more bells and whistles which 99% of folks never use that complicates things. From a functionality standpoint, maybe a 20 year old version of Excel is all you really need. Opening up modern versions of Excel and seeing a gazillion different boxes/clicks/menu choices is what scares a lot of people away. They mistakenly think they have to learn ALL of it to use Excel, which is not true.
And with 100% seriousness, since you are a) computer literate and b) understand bond math in and out, learning rudimentary Excel would be relatively easy. In one to two hours, you would be rocking along. It’s not like the earth would stop spinning if you made a mistake in Excel.
Only downside I can see is that if you get too proficient, they are going to call you out of retirement to work the muni desk again. Everybody on a bond desk has a Bloomberg and Excel running all the time. . . .