muscleman

Yeah I noticed that. It seems like the market is getting more aware of the conversion possibility

Thanks! 8)

I just moved from IB to TD. I've been using Fido, IB and TD at the same time recently and placed orders at similar times. IB almost always gets me the worst fill. Fido's fill is usually the best, with TD in between.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-shifts-gears-on-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-1513515600 shhh... http://archive.is/QdGy8 Thank you so much! This is awesome!

Overall, I think the term "circle of competence" and "Do not lose money" are critical, but can be quite misleading. These two terms together may get some investors to believe: 1. If I lose money, that means it is out of my circle of competence, which means I need to work harder and study harder. 2. If I study harder, I would gain circle of competence, I would not lose money anymore. Then after another few losing trades, he would start to question his own ability, feel really frustrated, and try to study more and pause investing until he studies those subjects. Then he would come back with more knowledge therefore higher confidence, invest again, and lose again, and feel even more frustrated than before. I don't care how many other people got into this trap, but that was exactly my own experience over the past few years. Now I view this business as a difference principal. Rigid and flexible. 1. I have to be rigid on my own rules for entering a position. I have to have a check list and the stock has to meet all those criterias. No exception. 2. I have to be flexible on the expectation of each trade. I may make money or I may lose money on this trade. It is just a single trade. No big deal. What I observed and what I did in the past few years was exactly the opposite. Flexible and rigid. I was flexible in my rules for opening a position, like, Oh Ackman bought this. It must be good. Oh someone wrote a VIC thesis and they think asset value along is 2x the stock price. That looks good. And I was rigid in my expectation for making money. Like, I am following the value investing principals and there is margin of safety, so I have to be able to win on this trade. Oops it went down. It doesn't feel good, but that just means it is only a better opportunity. Maybe I should buy more? Opps it went down more. Damn! It has to bottom out right here. It will eventually bounce and go up 4x instead of my original 2x, but I am already down 50%. Opps it is even down more, and ouch, Ackman sold! OMG! What should I do tomorrow morning? :-[

Exactly. I was gonna mention VRX for sure. So many super investors were in it just because others did. Sequoia has an analyst that covers nothing but VRX, if I remember correctly, just like Fairholme has an analyst that just covers SHLD. I am surprised that this analyst failed to see what the short sellers saw. Sometimes people can get so biased and can't face reality, just like some financial advisers are still telling their clients that they firmly believe Trump will resign or get impeached in a few months. Too much delusion.

muscleman, I hope that you - by my biased quoting here - can see, that this line of posting is counter productive, for the CoBF members on here. If persons active here on CoBF can't post here on CoBF about their losses, and their afterwards reasonings related to that - [without being called out on CoBF this way, like you have done here], we [us, here at CoBF] will all most likely fare less well going forward. The wisdom of the losses [investing failures] are as precious as the wisdom of the gains [investing succeses]. - - - o 0 o - - - Please, be nice. Well... Don't blame me. The starter of this thread said he would like to see "brutally honest" posts, so I am just posting what slipped through my mind without any nice decorations. :P

Let me be honest. I know nothing. When I look at a sector and start to get a feel of how to predict earnings and make a few good investments, I start to thing I have circle of competence there. Then after losing a few, I start to think I maybe don't have any. The fact is that this is a probabilistic game and even if I have circle of competence in a sector, that doesn't mean I will make money on every trade, but the term "circle of competence" tend to make me feel like if I stay within the circle, I can make money on every stock I pick. :D In addition, some sector are extremely hard. I remember there was a board member who claims to be an oil and gas expert. He lost a lot of money during the 2014 down turn. The fact is that some sectors are so hard and even if you run the company and you own 100% of its stocks, you could still lose. I think circle of competence is a dangerous term.

Yep. This is right. I am using Fidelity and I am happy with it so far. Most brokers take rebates from HFT firms, which make me concerned. On the other hand I do felt like over the past few years, my orders in IB almost always got filled at bid/ask instead of somewhere in the middle with price improvements, while my order at Fidelity seems to do better. I started using TD now and I'll keep an eye on it. Worst case is that I transfer the account to Fidelity, but I'll never use IB again. I focus mostly on micro caps, and IB's really expensive for buying those low price shares.

Not just how they handle Mongolian Bonds, but their customer service in general. I also found this interesting, but maybe it is written by someone who works for the brokers that work with HTFs. I've seen articles written in the opposite way and saying that brokers who place orders directly into the exchanges are the best. https://www.barrons.com/articles/fidelity-tops-in-price-improvement-for-retail-investors-1436589662 "But the big lesson from the statistics, Weisberger says, is that retail trades executed through the big wholesale market makers get the best pricing in the stock market. That’s an inconvenient fact for the market makers’ stock-exchange rivals, and brokers that patronize them, such as Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR)."

With the recent nc spin of hbb..... IB converted my b shares of hbb within a few weeks allowing me to sell at 39/share... meanwhile ally.com (I know I should change) still hasn't done it and it's drifted to 27/share. Just a anecdotal counterpoint. I wonder if other's with different brokers participating in the spin had other experiences? Interesting. I heard of similar things like that before when SHLD spin off various assets. Does anyone have experience of TD's spin off handling? I assume no one is using TD here because the commission is too high?

What's going on with the preferreds? Up 30% today. Didn't find any news

This Jan I bought senior bonds of Mongolian Mining corp. The company was in bankruptcy so they wanted bond holder to vote for their restructuring deal, which means filling out a few pages with info like broker's EuroClear account number or DTC account number. I asked IB for that info. It took them a whole week to respond to me: "The deadline is still two days from today, so why are you in such a rush to get the info today?" WTF! :o Then in May i found that I needed to fill some additional paper work to get the new securities, so I contacted IB. Again I waited for a whole week to get their initial response, and every response took at least a week. After a month, they filled the paper work. Then I finally got the bonds in August, but IB is such a lousy broker that they spent months and told me that they could not find any bids for the bonds. I got scared that I may not be able to sell at all and got stuck with these bonds. I eventually found out that TD Ameritrade is able to sell these bonds, so I requested a transfer, which took months to happen. The bonds finally hit my account yesterday. I called TD, and in just one hour, they were sold. Great relief! You don't know how much pain I suffered.

Thank you! Have you used TD?

Anyone using TD?

Thank you! Any stories about stocks also welcome

Any additional stories like this are welcome! Especially including TD.

I trade small cap US stocks primarily. Any such anecdote appreciated, especially including TD.

Thank you! These anecdotal points are exactly what I am looking for

https://www.tdameritrade.com/tools-and-platforms/order-execution.page https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1340&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsZHPBRClARIsAC-VMPArbWzUQA_kueRnn3HWInzap2ViYVFypHi1n9Cw35gtt2agcA9-124aAvuuEALw_wcB It is hard to know who is telling the truth. IB says price improvement over NBBO for 100 shares is 0.31, while TD says it is 1.36. Hard to believe it could be so much.

Thank you! In that case I'll go with TD then.

Oh..... They force people to liquidate penny stocks if the minimum balance is too low? That kind of sucks..... Have you seen any trade issues in ME? I Googled around and it seems like people really don't like ME's customer service. I have the impression that ME's customer service is as bad as IB? Yep. Seems silly. But guess you could always hold them somewhere else. No trade issues other than some questionable DRIP fills. Have only really dealt with customer service when moving accounts over but were helpful then...but could be a reason for that. Thank you. Some reviewers say its web based trading platform is slow and clunky. Do you have any such experiences? Do you use other brokers and do you have any feelings that orders sometimes get filled in other brokers but not in or vice versa?

Oh..... They force people to liquidate penny stocks if the minimum balance is too low? That kind of sucks..... Have you seen any trade issues in ME? I Googled around and it seems like people really don't like ME's customer service. I have the impression that ME's customer service is as bad as IB?

do you experience any trade issues? For example if you place an order in ME and a similar order in another broker, is there any time when the other one got filled but not in ME?

Yes, this shouldn't be material if you are holding for a few years. But, if you are choosing a broker because they charge $6.95 per trade but the real transaction cost is $106.95, then you should at least be aware of the execution cost. Same if you are using Robinhood, which offer "free" trade. Totally agree. Can’t figure out how ME offers free trades and at the same time does not accept rebates. Don’t know how it can make any money then.