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.
As many know, without going into semantics of investing strategies and I am conservative(don’t short stocks).. I am in Fidelities ‘loan for short sales’ program for kicks its a few pennies here and there and gives me insignt into what shorties are doing.
Anyway to me this new thing of allowing your shares to be loaned and for you to write covered calls on them seems like a back-office mess in a sigma/selloff event to an ‘issue’.. have to think this thru.. here is the bulletin I got from FIDO this AM. Bea
There have been some recent updates to Fidelity’s Fully Paid Lending Program. First, options traders can now write covered calls in the “cash” account type while shares are on loan. Therefore, in addition to the premium for selling the call, you can potentially receive income from lending your shares. If the call option is assigned, the loan will be terminated and the shares returned. Second, due to the shortened settlement cycle of T+1, you now have quicker access to sales proceeds when you sell shares on loan. Shares are typically returned on the trade date. Finally, you can view month-to-date accruals by security along with current lending positions, lending rates, and collateral positions on Fidelity.com
Schwab solved a problem. For about 9 months, it has been impossible to get the account history for stocks with an extension (e.g. all/prb, although you had to type all+prb). Therefore, it was impossible to track past dividend payments, etc. They have now fixed this. You now also get to just type the ticker symbol (all/prb). Sorry if this is a repeat of someone elses post, but it’s Friday night and I’m too burned out to scroll and read.
Does anyone know if there is a trading platform that has the ability to show a watchlist with rows that alternate between 2 background colors. StreetSmart Edge (SSE) currently has this capability – but Schwab is getting rid of SSE fairly soon – yesterday Schwab told me I have until September to use SSE. In SSE under the “Actions” pulldown, one can select “Colors” and then select “Alternating Row Background”. I have eyesight issues and it really helps me to be able to view a watchlist of 25 preferreds where one row has a white background and the next row has a light blue background, and then alternating between white, and light blue, etc. Back in the day ScotTrade’s Streaming Quotes had this feature. When ScotTrade closed, my account was switched to TD’s Think or Swim (TOS). I tried TOS for about 60 days and hated it, and then transferred to Schwab when I found SSE. After spending a few hours yesterday trying TOS again, I tried both web and desktop versions of TOS with no luck. I called Schwab and was told that TOS still does not have the capability to alternate row background colors. I also tried Fidelity’s Active Trader Pro – again, no luck. I’m stunned that such a simple customization still isn’t available in TOS or with Fidelity. I know there are a lot of trading platforms out there. I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that I need to leave Schwab when SSE goes away. I just need to find the trading platform that comes the closest to SSE in terms of user customization. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Fidelity and FZDXX –
I don’t remember where the thread was on the limitations on FZDXX as a MM fund at Fidelity, so I’ll put this follow-up here…. Speaking with a Rep this evening, I asked about the dollar amount restrictions on owning FZDXX….. Although it says it’s $100k, that’s not what it is for an IRA accounts… IRA minimum is $10k. What’s important is that the limitation only affects an opening position… Once you have the FZDXX account open you can take down as low as you like..
But here’s the other interesting point I was given, assuming my rep is correct: If you already own FZDXX in one account but want to use it for the first time in another that you would think has a $100k minimum, you can transfer as little as 1 share of FZDXX into the other account and you’re good to go…. Don’t sell 1 share, just transfer as little as 1 share between accounts… How’s that for being accommodating? And just to refresh, the practical difference between SPAXX and FZDXX (other than the better current yield) is that funds from sales of other securities in your account will not automatically get swept into FZDXX…. You’ll always have to execute a purchase with funds most likely to have first gone into SPAXX. I can live with that…. It’s still better than Schwab because your funds are automatically placed into a decently high earning account in SPAXX anyway.
2Whiteroses, can you use this fund to automatically cover any GTC bids you have outstanding, or will you still have to move funds over to SPAXX? Or could I use this fund to designate where I want my IRA withdrawal to come from?
Of course I could ask them the question myself but thought you might already have a answer to share.
That’s a good question, Charles and I’m not really sure if it’ll cover GTC bids outstanding or not but I think so – as they automatically cover purchases from it, why not up to the amount of cash you have which would include what’s in FZDXX….. I don’t know what you mean about using it designate where you want your IRA withdrawal from..
My wife started taking a monthly withdrawal from her IRA and it is coming out of the SPAXX fund. I was wanting a way to separate it from the money backing the GTC bids.
WSj article on poor vanguard customer service
https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/vanguards-die-hard-customers-have-a-message-for-new-ceo-the-service-is-abysmal-c2da0491?st=k4z19ab0y3joii5&reflink=article_copyURL_share
Vanguard ranked last out of eight major brokerages for customer satisfaction with website performance and mobile apps in a recent survey of 2,700 investors conducted by Investor’s Business Daily, which is published by The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones. The asset manager has acknowledged the problems, which some analysts chalk up to an underinvestment in technology.
Not surprised. I thought their redesign was awful and made things harder to find than the prior site. I was talking with my dentist a few months ago and he agreed the site was terribly designed and he said his brother had difficulty finding things on the site. I am also less than impressed with their customer service. It took me 3 or 4 calls to finally get to someone that could help me with an after-tax backdoor conversion. One didn’t know what I was asking for and redirected me to someone else that told me to call a different phone number. Second person hung up on me when they didn’t know what I wanted. Third person finally re-directed me to an American that understood what needed to be done. What used to take 5 minutes in prior years took me an hour of repeated phone calls.
FIDO hit me with a 34 cent fee to sell my RWAYZ today, and 2 cent fee to sell a partial yesterday. Monday hit with a 18 cent fee to sell the AGM PC
June 28th no fee to buy WAFDP
June 17th 3 partial buys of TRINZ no fee
Wonder what changed?
Sounds like the normal SEC fee levied on all brokerages when stock is sold (but not bought). Brokers just pass the fee on to us. Rate increased on May 22 from $8.00 to 27.80 per million.
https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024-47
Thanks Net
Goodness while catching up on a few weeks postings, I am surprised by the amount of negative Schwab posts. I don’t represent Schwab but no doubt it is my favorite brokerage.
As far as ratings on the bank, remember Schwab has separate entities. I use their bank after leaving Suntrust/Truist merger. It is great and I don’t doubt the rating.
Searching for the history of preferreds has always been easy for me. In my portfolio holdings at the far right there are three lines. Click. Many options appear including transaction history.
Who would own the common stock? Well, I do. I have a 16% gain over 14 months.
I didn’t transition from TD so can’t really help on those issues.
Schwab allows me to vote for the stocks I own. I cannot abide any other policy.
I have 4 brokerage accounts. Why? Because there is nothing I can do to change a brokerage policy. I can only find a brokerage that offers what I want.
Finally, as retail investors I am grateful for free trading. Sometime we all tend to become aggravated and lose sight of what blessings we have.
IBKR gets hit with $48 mil loss involving BRK.A https://seekingalpha.com/news/4119488-interactive-brokers-realizes-loss-related-to-nyses-berkshire-a-share-glitch?mailingid=35841649&messageid=2900&serial=35841649.2115&source=email_2900&utm_campaign=rta-stock-news&utm_content=link-3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha&utm_term=35841649.2115
I noticed this morning Schwab has put up on their start page that they have been awarded a JD Powers award for banking 6yrs in a row Guess they are trying to counter complaints about low returns on interest.
“#1 in Customer Satisfaction with Checking Accounts from Direct Banks—6 years in a row.” Maybe they’re putting that up now while they still can…
Bea, when it comes to foreign stocks, I have found they pay a lot of times semi annually or even on a annual basis. I think this appeals less to an american investor who has come to expect quarterly payments. Then you have the affects of currency exchange to take into account. How do these figure into your investments?
2WR, this is a very interesting case. My speculation is:
1) Customer has a $10k account with $186 in cash. They see that BRK-A trades at $185 and put in a buy order for say one share. The brokerage software approves the order since there is enough cash in the account to settle the trade. Even if the account is a margin account with zero cash, they probably have enough buying power to add $185 in margin debt.
2) BRK-A is halted, so no orders go through.
3) BRK-A opens and immediately trades in ~$650k to $750K range. A market order gets filled in that range before the back office margin managing software could block the trade. The $10k account now has a margin debt of up to $750k with ZERO ability to pay it, even though they are legally on the hook to pay it.
4) Since the customers can’t pay the debt, IB busts their trades, but cannot get the NYSE to bust them, so IB eats the loss between the purchase price and whatever the margin clerk can sell them for.
5) Not the first time a software issue hurt IB. Recall a few years ago when oil futures traded down to NEGATIVE ~$40 a barrel. Some accounts were long the futures and wanted to sell, but IB software would NOT allow sell orders for negative prices. IB also ate the losses on those accounts, so in both cases they stood by their customers.
6) I suspect that other brokerages had the same issue, but we will see if they disclose it or not.
7) BOTTOM LINE: Black Swans do occasionally land and 100% foolproof software fails. We also have particular experience with Black Swans but were not involved in the BRK-A trades.
Schwab has had its share of issues lately. Perhaps it is getting better. I had a CD that matured today. I expected to receive the funds after hours which was my experience with them.
I received the principal and the interest at around noon. Therefore, I was able to invest the funds the same day.
Picking On Schwab – another example of the effects of their annoying unwillingness to sweep cash automatically into a competitively earning MMF:
Today, (not yesterday 6/18, the day of the call) Schwab posted a called CD transaction on 46656MFU0 JPMORGAN CHASE BANK CD 5.600% 10/18/2024. I’m pretty positive it was not posted yesterday in time to move it to SWVXX but if it was, it was very late in the day. Doesn’t that mean they’ve locked in 2 days worth of 5% interest for themselves that I cannot begin earning until I get to move the funds to SWVXX at close of business tomorrow? Sure it’s pennies, but when it’s all done automatically to my benefit at Fidelity, it is aggravating to have to deal with.
You are actually out 3 days of interest due to Juneteenth 🙁 And could be as many as 5 days over a long weekend.
If the CD is in a margin account, you could sort of work around this by purchasing SGOV on the day before the CD matures so the trade settles on the same day as the CD.
It’s kind of ironic that on one hand Schwab seems to be courting active traders by offering SSE and TOS. But on the other hand, the terrible sweep account is especially punitive for traders. I have my trading account there solely because of SSE, but when they shut it down I will probably move it to Fidelity.
Maybe I should try SSE…. my primary reason for staying IS TOS… If I like SSE better than TOS, then I’ll have real motivation to move once they dump it…. ha
2wr: Pretty sure they will not even let anyone “new” use SSE as they are shutting it down. I have accounts at Schwab for years using SSE. Account from TDA that moved over cannot get onto SSE.
My two cents. TOS is OK for trading. SSE is better for showing dividend dates, ex dates, amounts, etc.
Schwab is full of hubris that permeates the company. They are not an advocate for small investor. They should be proactive for use in dealing with the SEC (such sec15c2-11) among many issues.
Schwab’s ToS down this morning. Can’t log in. Waited 15 minutes on hold, then gave up. Given all their problems noted here, I really wish Fido would have accepted my little penny stock holding. ToS was the best thing they had. Now it’s going wonky, too.
They desperately need a makeover. Per Schwab’s request, I recently filled out a rating survey for them. It wasn’t pretty.
‘What a bunch of maroons.’ ~B. Bunny
JMO
i can’t log in either.
got this message
Due to a technical issue, some clients may have difficulty logging in to Schwab.com, our mobile app, and StreetSmart platforms. We’re working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience. For assistance with your account, please call us at 800-435-4000.
Lots of people having trouble but I spoke to TOS and people are having success with clearing the cache. Reboot as well.
P.S. I had trouble with the website but not TOS and then was able to get into the site. Fully disappointed with Schwab. What a mess.
On Friday morning, 6/14, Schwab notified me that I had been put 100 sh of DG. The Rep said the put occurred late Thursday afternoon, 6/13. I had some cash sitting in the account and liquidated enough of SWVXX on Friday to cover the balance. They assessed me $8.50 margin interest. I was told that since the stock was put late Thursday, settlement was Friday. The Rep said that I would have been unable to liquidate their money market fund on Thursday because of when the stock was put to me (after 4pm). I told him it was blatantly unfair to charge me for something that I had no knowledge of. The Rep agreed and said Schwab would reverse the interest charge and show my margin balance as -0-. He told me, however, that this situation COULD LIKELY OCCUR AGAIN if I am put stock in the future. My feeling is that they shouldn’t be allowed to charge interest for transactions occurring after market hours and for which there is no ability to settle the account before notification.
Along the same lines, they do not execute orders on SWVXX until around 8:30PM daily. You should be allowed to enter or cancel orders on SWVXX and associateds for some after hours as well.
Continuing on about Schwab I got an unexpected call today from Schwab to explain why they still ended up charging me $4.95 ($6.95 to most people) to purchase NEWTG after initially charging $25… The answer I was given was because Schwab “acted as a principal” on the trade of this “Preferred.” When I corrected her to tell her it’s not a preferred but a note I then asked why I was charged a commission on buying this but I would not be charge on a purchase of pari passu issues NEWTL, Z, and I… I was greeted with hems and haws and a willingness to refer me to the fixed income department… This from a person who was chosen to answer a question I posed to my Schwab rep, not because I called her….. After this, I did NOT even bother to ask her to explain why they charged me a commission if they acted as a principal? As I told her, this goes not to merely a specific complaint about the commission but it goes as another indication of how much more closely it seems I will need to monitor my account for accuracy and timeliness at Schwab than I did at TDA.
incidentally, I also noticed that the 3 other NEWT notes are referred to as “preferreds” on TOS. NEWTG is not, but that kind of error happened before as well… Schwab continues to add the charge on NEWTG trades…. Fido does not…
For those that have been at Schwab for awhile, after a CD or Bond Matures, how long until you get the money available? Same question for those at Fidelity, or if another broker?
At Fidelity, the funds are available the same day the CD or Treasury matures. I have often bought a new one that same day with the proceeds
No idea about Schwab
pig, if my memory serves me, Schwab at times posts the CD principal on the maturity date but the CD’s earned interest may no show up till later on the same day or after the market closed.
Prior to the account transfer to Schwab, I received a TDAm internal message that JPM CD, 5.5% coupon, with maturity of Sept 6 2024 was called for today (June 6th). It has not posted. yet.
Revising above: I just checked and principal for JPM CD was just posted (after market closed) but the CD’s earned interest is not shown yet. So re-investment or transfer to MM is delayed by one day.
Man & GnG, thanks yes I received principal of the same CD after market close today.
Another CD that matured late in May was received at random o’clock during the day. No way to tell as they do not time stamp when the transaction was completed.
For bonds at Schwab, so far it’s always posted during market hours on the day of maturity. I haven’t noticed a pattern to the time of day.
Schwab – HOW TO????
I’m exploring, unsuccessfully, at Schwab on how to search for dividend history on preferred stocks, apparently any preferred stock with a symbol It seems to be impossible to do and my call to Schwab today was useless as the rep simply offered a workaround rather than a HOW TO. I think this has been discussed here before but how do you do it?
If I am logged into my account and go to History, I see a history of all transactions.. But at the top there are Search boxes one of which defines the search range [“ALL” chosen by default] and then Symbol. Using SPNT-B as my example, when I start to type in SPNT, up comes “SPNT/PRB” as the default… Click on the default symbol and you get “No Transactions Found
There are no transactions available for your search criteria. Modify your search selections and try again,” even though I just received one yesterday and another one on 2/29. When I look at my transactions under History, the dividend shows up as being paid for SPNT+B…. That symbol produces the same non results…. So what do you do, continue to guess until you hit the right symbol combo? Not being able to reach a human at Schwab who knew what to do on this basic issue was not encouraging….. He ended up suggesting calling tech support, which of course, is not available on the weekend. How helpful….
When I type spnt+b as it is in the transaction list in the history search I do get my transactions. However, I don’t get any dividends from before the tda/Schwab transfer date. I’m using the mobile app though so I don’t know if that matters.
Thnx Irish – Apparently it does matter…… I’m on my Windows laptop, not a mobile app and that does not work…. And if that’s OK with Schwab then that’s Strike 1. I will not have my financial life sitting on a cell phone….
2WR, I have lived with this issue for a few years.
the way I get around is long and laborious, but FWIW, it works.
The search will produce “no transaction found” no matter what preferred format you use!
So, just keep the filter at ALL, just hit SEARCH. A list of everything appears.
I then scroll down and look for the security I want, it will be in the form ABC+D on the list. Of course, if you ( logically and obviously ) enter the + format before clicking search, you get “no transactions found”.
I have spoken to Schwab Customer Support about this a couple times, they are simply not interested in correcting it.
Have started a FIDO account, and am slowly moving assets to it. This among other reasons is why I finally decided to move after so many years of frustration. Another reason is I don’t like TOS
2WR,
remember the other day when I said Schwab uses multiple nomenclatures for preferreds? you have discovered another crack among them.
Most of schwab.com uses the “/pr” nomenclature.
The “History” tool uses the “+” nomenclature, so the issue that is “SPNT/PRB” on schwab.com is “SPNT+B”in the history tool.
Unfortunately, the search box on the history page won’t let you use a “+” to search for anything. It will let you search with a /pr in the search box, but it will return no results because the entry you are looking for in the history database is listed with a “+”. So, catch-22. You can only find it with +, but you can’t search with a +. Another example of a programming 101 fail.
Now, go sit down for a minute and let the screaming inside your head subside.
I have a few ways to get history like you mention – none are great:
1. In streetsmart edge, it just works, but only looks back 90 days. just click on the transaction tab, and its all there – but not very far back. Helpful, but only just.
2. On Schwab.com, go to History and select only “dividends” under “filter by transaction type”, then press search. It gives me 4 years of history (haven’t tried looking further back). Click to sort by issue name and scroll down to SPNT+B and all the dividends are listed. Irritating to have to scroll through everything, but it works.
3. Up at the top of the history page, you can click on “export” and download the history into a CSV file and see all the history there (also in SPNT+B format). You can open that with Excel and search/sort the data.
Stupid. schwab. it .team.
This is another one of those things I tried to get this fixed years ago, but I gave up trying.
Thanks, Inspy and P… As you both mentioned, there are workarounds I’ve discovered but it sure is not encouraging to know that Schwab thinks that a workaround is good enough so they won’t bother to make the History search work the way it should for the preferred buyers…. It’s an indication of a mentality thing that does not seem inviting for a whole sector of investors…Throw that in with the way they treat MM sweeps underscoring again a mentality of willingness to take advantage of customer’s inaction/ignorance and they are on a short rope with me.
TOS is the main reason I stayed around for the transition. I do like it, primarily because I’m used to it…. I could probably learn to use other trading platforms to do what I do in TOS, but here’s an example of where customer inaction/ignorance has worked in Schwab’s favor..
I have a dinner invitation Tuesday to meet with Schwab regional officers and my local rep as a way to introduce new transferees to the wondrous ways of Schwab. I guess I’ll have a lot to talk about.
BTW, Fidelity is where I have another account. I do like them and consider them improving, but I somehow feel more comfortable having accounts at more than one broker…… Then again, at my stage of life, maybe consolidation is the way to go for simplification purposes.
2wr – please let us know how the Tuesday discussion w/ Schwab regional folks goes….
Newman –
Not really much to report…… the dinner wasn’t what I expected. I thought it was going to be primarily an introductory to Schwab for TDA transferees. It wasn’t really… There were others invited as well just interested in knowing more about their Schwab experiences….So it turned out to be just a general promo for all Schwab can do for you. There wasn’t any real opportunities to bring up some of the glitches that non-Schwabbers experience when compared to where they were coming from. So no opportunity to discuss their policies regarding sweep accounts that earn next to nothing unless the customer dynamically manages their funds into SWVXX or other true MM funds, nor questioning the historically slow pattern for paying/posting dividends, etc… On the plus side, personally I suppose there were a few things discussed I could possibly explore, but mostly all the standard advice to do this do that and become a better investor, etc… I know myself well enough to know all about those kinds of things but also know that in reality, I’ll never religiously do them so not very valuable advice…….Overall, it felt to me to be essentially a cookie cutter promo dinner, not invaluable, mind you, but not exceptional either.
2WR, My impression (admittedly only a month in to my tenure there) is that Schwab never really entered the 21st century. The place isn’t meant for investors to stalk their terminals every day (like I’ve done for the last month or so). Certainly not meant for retirees who value prompt payment. 1st world problem I know, but I live in the 1st world, so there is that.
Having said that. so far, I have received all payments I am due (except for CGBDL) which apparently has been missed by others as well, so perhaps not a Schwab issue.
Yeah, it seems everything I have heard about Scwab is sub-par – not a disaster but not a well-oiled machine either. I have e-Trade for several accounts and it’s very good. There were some hiccups when MS took over earlier this year but those seem to have been ironed out.
was it at least a good dinner?
decades ago, there was an investment advisor (can’t remember what flavor) who wanted to meet to try to sell me his services. I kept turning him down. Eventually, he offered to take me to dinner to make his pitch, and I finally gave in.
Ended up at Morton’s (couple of blocks from my office in DC). Had a excellent dinner. Morton never fails me.
Didn’t go with the guy. figured that if he was planning to make enough from me to be paying that much for dinners, I probably needed to look elsewhere…
Ha! It came very close to Morton’s in quality if you consider a buffet set up outside the meeting room offering hand cleavered chicken leg and thigh, pork, or poached perch served with ice water on the table about the same as Westholme Wagyu Ribeye served with Pebble Lane Cabernet Sauvignon.
Do you like the other Schwab tools being TOS. I am finding TOS isn’t even working right compared to when it was with TD…. just teetering on if I should bail or not.
Anyone finding good value in their services?
What do you find that is working differently in TOS? I realize I use a very low percentage of what TOS can be used for, but so far, I’ve not seen anything to complain about vis a vis TOS and how it works now as opposed to how it worked before.
Well, a lot of values are off including P/L Open so you can’t trust that. Schwab is not giving buying power for many of my preferreds now that TD did. Schwab’s website account values don’t match TOS. Lots of TOS values are incorrect and Schwab agrees and has no estimate on when they will be rectified. There are also values that were present in TD’s TOS that aren’t there at Schwab such as implied volatility types.
When I do orders of OCO (one cancels another), I get errors about being overextended on shares which is impossible so the logic is not implemented correctly.
There are slow executions and some other stuff like that. I think some routing options are gone. There’s a lot….
Is anyone loving ETRADE or Interactive Brokers?
see above. I use the Power eTrade app with my accounts – both desktop and mobile versions and they work very well. Did some trades flawlessly while in the grocery store this week. LOL.
Thanks, YH – Funny how willing I’ve been to overlook your first point on P/L Open… I’ve experienced that as well frequently enough to choose to just ignore it….. I shouldn’t…. It makes my portfolio appear a whole lot more volatile than it’s ever been at TDA and that’s with essentially the same holdings – and without any discernible reasons why either …. and that’s why I ignore it….. Still, I do not expect to be on the cheerleading squad any time soon.
2white roses I had to get into my Fido account about mid-day to send some correspondence to a rep. I was pleasantly surprised to see several of my accounts were updating with the market although I could be mistaken.
Fellow Schwab Account Holders…we may finally have a significant improvement/fix to a frustration we’ve been fighting for years with history searches for our preferred stocks. As of today (for the first time ever) I can search the history on my preferred stocks by keying in “WFC/PRL”, “ADC/PRA” etc. (2 examples) and the full history is shown. Alternatively, I can also from the Positions Page for each individual preferred stock I own “click” on the “next steps” drop down menu at the right and select “transactions” and it takes me to the history for that preferred stock. Amazing as I have been requesting this for YEARS!
thank you, sman. I have been complaining about this for a very long time; it’s good to finally have a fix for it.
sman:
Thanks for your efforts. This was a simple fix that a first year of college computer science major could have easily corrected, and it took Schwab years and likely thousands of complaints to fix it.
What has happened to that once great broker? After being there for decades I’m seriously considering moving all my accounts to Fido.
More Schwab questions on how they do things:
Today I got a dividend on LAND. I’ve been reinvesting divvies at TDA but this morning all I see on Schwab is the cash in hand… Calling up to find out if instructions to reinvest transferred with the security, I was told that Schwab’s SOP is to post dividends re-investments at around 3 PM. When asked does this mean that the money is reinvested on an execution price calculated at 3PM approx, I was told yes….. Is that true? So on a day like today where LAND is now up +!.5% heading into 3 PM, I get lousy execution on reinvesting vs what I would have gotten had dividend been reinvestment at the opening? I realize reinvesting rules are different from issue to issue and sometimes you get hosed no matter what does Schwab differ substantially from other brokers in how they handle dividend reinvestments?
BTW, I just checked at 2:45 and they’ve already posted the reinvestment at 13.4161….
was that a good fill?
The question yazzer is whether or not it’s a better or worse fill than I’ve gotten at TDA…. It was an above mkt fill, but that’s happened before so I’d say it’s a wash…. I don’t know about other people but imho what happens on DRIP fills is hardly ever a good deal and when it is it’s more due to the policy of the issuer. To me, most of the time the advantage of DRIP is the automatic aspect of it… Were one disciplined enough to DIY immediately upon receiving the divvy, you’d probably always do better on your own.. I know I don’t have that disciplne…..
I opened an International Broker account this past month so I can trade bonds more easily. That seems to be working out since it saves me having to call in to bond desks.
But today I noticed they had not released the funds from ET-E being called like my Fidelity account has. I want to redeploy that cash but they are tardy in freeing it back up so that is a demerit for them. Their site is also kludgy and non-intuitive so those are some downsides for anyone thinking of using them.
Have people had good success with the Fidelity bond desk? I had messed with the interface on my wife’s account and it looked like everything could be done online for a multitude of cusips I tried and then I went to actually execute the last step yesterday and transactions can only be done if the security is already in the inventory of Fidelity.
Today I’ve tried calling in and gotten stuck in a hold loop with this line: 800-626-4600. Does anyone else have a better number?
Any good experiences with them?
YH, what you found is true. They can show you real time quotes but you have to use their bond screener to see what they have in inventory if you want to buy without having to call in. A year ago I had no problem calling in and buying 10 to 20 lots of bonds not available on the platform and paying the 50.00 charge, but lately others here have commented things have changed and one person said he was told he needed to make a 250 lot purchase minimum. I have had my eye on a few lately, but haven’t pulled the trigger to find out what experience I will have.
YH, the number at Fidelity that gets me to someone at the bond desk is: 800-544-5372.
TDA to Schwab switch today. A Bond and a CD (both maturing tomorrow) disappeared from my positions. Oh goody.
Anyone with Schwab here that can vouch that happens to maturing holdings?
4 accounts moved, 2 look good, just those 2 issues to resolve.
Does your total portfolio value match up with your records?
Grid, no its off by the redemption value of those items. Those 2 securities never made it over from TDA. TDA has shutdown any access to my previous account so unknown whether or not they are waiting for maturity before they send it over. Support was responsive and confirmed its nowhere to be found. They opened up a case on it. We’ll see what happens. Hard to believe at this point it will just appear out of thin air tomorrow morning.
My TDA margin account moved to Schwab today without a hitch. However, the drawings I’ve done on ToS charts didn’t. I talked to a Schwab rep who asked me to authorize the transfer of a file from a TDA server to Schwab. He said I would have the drawings in a day or two. I lost all but my main ToS workspace, which I expected.
I have not called them yet but in some (not all) accounts that transferred over to Schwab, all the lots of all the stocks in the account have a wrong “open date.” All of them show 05/10/2024 (last Friday) as the open (purchase/acquisition) date. Does anyone have the same issue and have you called Schwab?
The accounts with the wrong open dates are all non-taxable accounts so it should not matter.
GnG where do you see “Open Date” in Schwab. I don’t have that info and when I went into settings to check the possible column, it wasn’t listed. Thanks
It’s good that it worked well for you. Most positions lost their cost basis for me.
I had Schwab already and bought some MTDJL on 5/8 for avg of 25.02 over 2 orders with no commission or fees. It was odd as though it was half in there system of something as bid/ask weren’t showing.
On 5/10, the orders were adjusted for two commissions of 31.95. I’ve spent most of the day trying to get them to fix it. I think I’ve been getting Schwabbbbbed the past few days as 2WR coined.
So far all I’ve checked is the usability of ThinkOrSwim…. Despite promises that all settings being transferred from TDA would be identical on Schwab TOS, it’s not the same – lots of customization I had done has disappeared…. I’m being told it’s being reported and will be identical to what it was by 8pm……….. Uhhuh…. we’ll see.. Taking one step at a time thanks for the heads up on other things to check. It’s amazing how dependent on one of these things you get to give yourself a decent feel for the markets you follow.
Congrats to all who have had no problems with the move to Schwab…. I’m not in the same boat… Promises that ThinkOrSwim will transfer identically have yet to be fulfilled… Spent another hour this morning with support resulting solely in more promises. One attempt to resolve by Support did produce some progress, but still not right…… I had TOS set up where I felt I had enough indicators showing to know what the overall market was doing at any time, including market indices, commodities, futures, treasuries, etc. That’s all gone – I might as well keep CNBC or BloombergTV on
Lol, 2WR, sucks to be a techie boy! Now if you were a luddite like me, your frustrations would be zero. They transferred all my preferred lists seamlessly. The other stuff you mentioned? I have always just opened up my CNBC app on Ipad to check that stuff. They have it organized for me to easily access.
WR maybe they are telling you that you don’t need all that information, it can be overwhelming. The Chinese have announced they are going to quit updating their markets real time on foreign investments to remove a source of negative data.
https://archive.ph/mie0T
2WR –
for what its worth, a thought about a different way to skin the cat. :
when I first moved to schwab, the customer support folks linked me up with an “expert” in streetsmart edge who did a one-on-one session with me (90 min?) to help me get it configured the way I wanted it. End result was great – got my exactly the configuration I wanted.
I wonder whether they could do something similar for you with ToS (rather than fighting to get things transferred, just build a new configuration that does what you want). That way you are getting help from customer support people who are used to actually helping rather than fighting with their tech guys (who aren’t).
Getting Schwabbed –
I’m not off to a good start with the TDA/Schwab transition that’s happening to me this weekend. I can’t connect to ThinkOrSwim either via TDA or Schwab credentials……. anyone else having the same problem?
They’re now telling me that TOS is down today due for “maintenance.” What a coincidence… First day and it’s down.
2WR,
Was under impression ToS not available until Sunday 12 May. Not relevant to me as I don’t use it, but reading back the email I got from them.
Yes, like after 5 pm, if I remember correctly. Im assuming I will have to repopulate my issues I track on Schwabs ToS. Im not really bothered by that as it will get rid of all clutter issues I thought about but never bought, nor ever will.
Gridbird I thought I read where your watchlists created in AMTD ToS would migrate over to Schwab ToS, we shall see. I can confirm tho that the Schwab ToS will still work with any excel spreadsheets you have set up to dynamically update data from ToS so that’s a lifesaver!
I cant totally remember. I know in the waning days of TD they were trying to get me to go into Schwabs ToS instead of TDs version. I would override and go to TD. My Schwab one at the time was empty. I would rather just have a clean slate anyways. I would always add one here or there and never buy. Then later ponder why I even have them cluttering up what I really track anyways. A fresh start would declutter the clutter and maybe get me more organized.
Eben-
I would like to know how to dynamically update Excel data from ToS. Do you have a link? TIA
rocks2stocks This article does a good job. https://optionstradesbydamocles.com/2023/11/24/how-to-connect-excel-with-thinkorswim/# I’d start in the MarketWatch tab, customize your columns and make a watchlist. Then export — to excel and paste into an excel sheet. Look at the formulas and you’ll see how to create your own custom setups in excel. Hope this helps!
I was wondering if anyone is interested in figuring out which broker, overall, is the best for buying preferred, baby bonds, treasuries, and bonds.
Not options, mutual funds, or CDs. I do not want to get too broad. I want to add treasuries and bonds to the discussion because I feel quite a few of us do not dabble in them as much as others here and we might need some advice in that aspect.
Perhaps we can simply state what we CANNOT do easily or cheaply which allows us to whittle down the list quickly. Perhaps we can narrow things down to 1-2 brokers which give the best abilities for the price. Frankly I find it confusing which one is better overall. Just look at how everyone is scrambling to buy the two new preferred that came out. SCExx and MTBxx.
I currently use Ally. I converted to it because Ally bought out Tradeking years ago. The fees are pretty much 0. I cannot recall getting hit by a fee in ages. Not a single complaint there in how I use it 99.9% of the time.
I have a hard time buying new preferred in many cases. It is very hit or miss and I find myself often paying several cents more then others here. I was able to buy the new MTBxx preferred but failed to buy the new SCExx preferred this week.
Baby bonds are a bit easier since they trade on a major exchange right away. I can easily call in and make a purchase if the ticker symbol is invalid in the interface. No problems with that aspect except the call itself. No fee for the call.
I cannot buy any security that was moved to the expert or grey market. Not a single one. I have read some brokers allow some specific purchases and deny other names?
Can anyone comment what broker they use and your experiences with my above complaints that the broker does MUCH BETTER?
If I do not get any feedback I am simply going to have to go through the comments of new issues and start taking better notes to figure it out.
I like Fidelity. Mostly because they pay interest on sweeps account and the other do not unless you manually move the money in and out of funds. They do not charge fees as often though you need to watch for their $50 foreign transaction fee. And they let you buy a few of the delisted issues.
Execution- Fidelity and Schwab have fantastic execution. I get poor execution w IBKR, but I use the free/lite version, not sure if that matters
Access to grey market, like the recent m&t name. It varies, maybe fidelity has a slight advantage.
Access to some legacy oddball pref securities – this is easy. IBKR wins hands down. For instance , I can’t buy GJH on fidelity without calling a rep.
Access to fixed income- IBKR is by far the best.
Also worth mentioning.. the bonus sign up.
I don’t love schwab but they have good sign up bonus, and referrals, including my link below. I heard robinhood has a great bonus but no way I go there.
https://www.schwab.com/client-referral?refrid=REFEREJ8R8ZX6
re: sign-up bonus, one may want to check what Merrill Edge offers. It is typically $600. for $200K At times, they will provide a bonus as well for adding new funds.
Each broker has respective advantages and drawbacks.
ME will tend to hold your new funds for a few days though it shows up as withdrawn at the transmit end. One has to call and insist they release immediately.
I am still in the process of moving over from T Rowe and it’s not complete. They are using ACAT
One small screw up so far I hadn’t considered. I didn’t check for when the interest and dividends hit the account for the month of May. Two holdings in the Roth didn’t move until after x-dividend date. All that is still left in the Roth is the MMF. When the dividends for one of the stocks that had been moved hit they didn’t put them in the MMF. They left them sit there, then when the money was transferred to FIDO the $350.00 was put into the regular IRA not a biggie but I am trying to grow the Roth.
They did pay my wife’s monthly withdrawal out of the IRA which I wasn’t expecting and she was worried about. The partial call of TRINL happens Friday the 17th. It’s slow torture waiting for that to settle and I think that will allow the transfer to finish, but realizing they paid the monthly withdrawal that might be part of the problem with the hold up. I need to check next week about turning off.
I wish I had taken their offer a year ago to transfer over. They offered $2,000.00 but now it’s only a $1,000.00 This is paid 60 days after the transfer.
>> I get poor execution w IBKR, but I use the free/lite version, not sure if that matters
Yes, it does matter.
IBKR Pro utilizes SmartRouting which searches for the best available price across exchanges and dark pools. It will re-routes all or part of your order as well.
IBKR Lite routes orders to market makers in exchange for payment for order flow. Therefore, fills may be less frequent and inferior.
fc, if one is interested in buying Treasuries in the secondary, Schwab tends to offer the best pricing, especially at a reasonable quantity.
Again, each broker has respective advantages and drawbacks.
Schwab at times will post the funds of a note/bill or CD after hours at maturity and one may lose out on one extra day of being able to transfer the funds to a MM that pays higher interest.
T2
FC asked: “I was wondering if anyone is interested in figuring out which broker, overall, is the best for buying preferred, baby bonds, treasuries, and bonds.”
FC, unfortunately polygamy is the answer. Like spouses in the real world (present company excluded), the perfect, one size fits all brokerage for bonds does NOT exist IMO. Three of the ones already mentioned have quirks, here are a few of them.
1. Fidelity generally does not offer lower rated/junk corporates and/or munis. Another example can’t buy money good A1/AA rated, AGMC insured, Puerto Rico muni bonds because they are black listed. Does not allow standing, GTC orders, only “Fill or Kill” or “Day” so you have to reenter orders every day.
2. IBKR- You never know in advance what commission you will pay and/or minimum fill size you will get. You can have a corporate bond buy order for >=$25k face and get filled with 1 bond and pay up to $8 or 0.8 points for that bond. You cannot set a minimum fill size. Will not let you buy any corporates that have less than $50 million outstanding. This eliminates ~ 10% to 20% of the market.
Will not let you buy many callable, called and/or sinkable munis for various reasons. Eliminates ~ 5% to 10% of the market.
You can have standing GTC buy/sell orders but their system incorrectly, automatically cancels ~ 99% of orders for issues maturing in ~ <=45 days, plus a lower percentage of other ones with further out maturities.
Back office is subpar getting your payments, both interest and principal properly paid on time.
3. Schwab generally does not allow “bid backs” where you can offer less than their ask price, unlike Fidelity and IBKR. So take it or leave it pricing. Generally does not offer below investment grade corporates or munis. Good news is they build the commission into their ask/offer price so you know exactly how much you are going to pay in advance. Also
There are other quirks not mentioned for these three and highly likely that other brokerages also have a few.
Related to the broker discussion…
Fidelity offers direct access to its fixed income group, the group that will actually execute trades for bonds not in inventory. But I was told a min of $2.5m account value is required.
Does anyone have access to this group and any notable improvements vs the regular fidelity fixed income team?
Thanks, Tex – A good summary and I appreciate it. However, what you describe as good news about Schwab, which I will assume is the same as was with TDA, I consider bad news…… That they build the commission in to their ask/offer tells you they are acting as principal, not agent…. So where Fido will charge $1 a bond , period, you never know if Schwab is tagging you for $1 or $5 or what. Couple that with the take it or leave it approach to their price and you’re guaranteed to be always paying the full offered side on a buy and getting only the bid side on a sell, and you’ll never know exactly what you’re being charged if you deal with them only….. There are ways to figure it out if you deal with more than 1 broker, but odds are it ain’t no way it’ll come in lower than Fido’s $1/bond…. Also, Fido’s maximum charge for a bond trade is limited isn’t it? I don’t normally buy amounts to allow me to take advantage of that, but I know it used to be $50…… Is that still the case? Buy 100 1k bonds and you still pay $50.
2WR things are a changing, you can feel it in the wind. I haven’t seen one of your links lately to any good music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJzWGkgFcTU
I do like to use links in posts to music lyrics that come to mind when I think they can say what I’m thinking better than I can. But when the noun of the day for me continues to be “poignancy,” I figure there’s not many ways to tie poignant lyrics to the III investment world. But with that warning, if you’d like a coupla links to songs you may not have heard before, try these.
For III purists, my apologies – skip this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s4GotuLHao&ab_channel=AndersonEast It takes some kind of performer to pull off a performance like this totally solo and captivate an audience at the country music Mecca, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville You could hear a pin drop if it did in his captivated audience during this performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azozp85S94A&ab_channel=DaveVanRonk-Topic – from an old 60’s folkie…
2WR now 1WR, I am sure you are missing the Mrs. this Mothers day as are your kids. Music is a great help and where I always turn, thanx for sharing take care.
Guess I am a lucky one, mom is 90 and doing ok. The Sweetest Gift, a mother’s smile! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWEQDyrbphE
Tim will have to start a music tab!! lol. best to all. Bea
2WR, I guess one person’s good news is another ones bad news! To me the fact that you know exactly what you are going to pay is a benefit both to Schwab and Fido, and to the disadvantage of IBKR. In a sample size of thousands, the end price of Fido and Schwab is identical for 10 or more pieces. So it appears Schwab’s standard adder is $ 1 or .1 point per pond. I do not recall ever seeing a case where it was more than that, but my sample size is not 100% of every bond they have offered.
Fido’s max commission of $50 only applies to maturities of 1 year or less. For greater than 1 year, the max is $250, which is $1 or .1point for a 250 piece buy. So to get lower, you have to be buying more than $250k face.
There is an underlying factor here that is not talked about. Instead of saying it applies to all brokerages, I will limit it to these three for CD’s, corporates and munis, but NOT UST’s. . They mostly use the exact same bond trading exchanges instead of offering from their own inventory. Tradeweb/Bonddesk, UBSBond, Municenter, etc are some of the large bond exchanges for retail offerings. So a listing dealer of which there are thousands puts it up on Bonddesk and you see the exact same offering at Fido, Schwab and IBKR and can immediately separate out what Schwab’s markup is. And you know exactly what Fido’s markup will be, leaving only IBKR as an unknown. This probably applies to most retail US brokerages but cannot say with 100% certainty. Of course, most institutional >$250k trades are done over a Bloomberg terminal.
Schwab has been pretty good with US treasuries so maybe it’s a lead broker for that. Fidelity seems like it might be good for some preferreds, to offer less than the ask. TD & Schwab trade desks have been take or leave it when they contact their “3rd party broker” as they have said.
Affinity4Investing posted this over on siliconinvestor:
A look at Schwab’s TD migration, 8 months in
https://www.investmentnews.com/rias/news/a-look-at-schwabs-td-migration-8-months-in-252941
i am not a money manager/financial advisor/etc. for anyone else, but it is interesting to see how schwab’s migration for advisors ($1.3 trillion) has gone (badly, apparently).
Maybe it explains a bit of why their service has been less than stellar for the rest of us.
The article says the attrition rate was only 4-5%, so why do you say it has gone badly?
As an RIA customer, I greatly preferred Schwab as a custodian compared to TDAI. The reason is that TDAI required even the simplest customer requests to be submitted via the RIA, causing delays and errors (and the RIA always blamed TDAI for the issues). With Schwab as custodian, I still had access to Schwab’s customer service, which was generally OK.
Another TDAI issue was that if you moved an account between RIA and self directed status (in either direction), you had to get a new account number (a slow process) and use a different website. With Schwab it’s just a status bit on the account, so when I signed up with, and then ultimately dumped the RIA, it was fast and easy in both directions.
P.S. An obvious disadvantage of an RIA only custodian like Altruist, no matter how great they are for the RIA, is that if you want to move assets between self directed and RIA accounts, you have to do an ACATS transfer.
Anybody thinking about what’s going to happen with Schwab MMFs after T+1 settlement goes into effect on May 28?
Right now it works reasonably well with a margin account to make a buy using the buying power from the MMF and then sell the MMF next day, so that the trades both settle on same day (and the converse for sales). I’m not sure how many people actually know how this works (thanks to Private for pointing this out here), but it does make Schwab somewhat competitive with Fido/Vanguard for cash management for traders
But when stocks go to T+1, this will no longer be possible and this would put Schwab at a big disadvantage. I guess one way Schwab could ameliorate this would be to allow same day settlement for MMFs up to a certain time (Merrill has this). I think Schwab has also vaguely alluded to improving their sweep account options (currently yielding 0.48%).
I think schwab may be doing (some?) same day settlements on MMFs already. I noticed that some MM trades I did recently were showing up as transacted in the evening of the day I entered them during market hours (at least in my account balances online – not checking “behind the scenes”).
If that is true, it will help.
Might not be a problem if I enter MM order next day after a stock sale, but it will mean that I will have to stay on top of things EVERY day. That may be a challenge for me because I am often “out of range” for a day or more at a time.
That all said, I haven’t seen anything from schwab.
I brought it up on a call with support a few minutes ago (they had recorded a sell transaction as a short – for no reason they could explain) and the rep had no clue what I was even talking about. I take that to mean that there isn’t a “script” written for this yet (or I had an uninformed rep – which is common).
Yeah I think the MMF trades do now show up in the evening, but the settlement date is still T+1. But perhaps this could be in preparation of going to same day settlement.
If they don’t do anything it will become more costly to leave limit orders active in a Schwab account.
They could also push back the MMF order entry deadline to say a half hour after the close, so you could enter an MMF sell if a market hours limit order fired near the close. There would still be a problem with after hours trades though.
Just received blast email from Schwab and they are not making any changes:
If you place a trade in a margin account and then need to sell money market funds (“MMFs”) to cover your purchase, the funds will need to be available prior to or on the same day as the trade settlement to avoid being charged margin interest. For trades placed for bonds, equities and other securities, the MMFs will need to be sold by 4 p.m. ET the same day the purchase trade is placed.
I am probably missing something as usual, but this does not seem to be an issue. I keep very little in the Schwab sweep account. When I buy a stock, I
need to sell a sufficient amount from SWVXX the same day to cover it. The only potential problem is if one uses gtc orders, in which case you need to keep sufficient funds in the sweep account to cover all potential open orders.
schwab is the worst.
Are you currently taking on new clients?