Tips/Advice for dealing with brokers

[Gregmal]

Thought this may be a helpful thread.

 

Given the dearth of complaints on Interactive Brokers, today I had a positive experience that to be honest, surprised me a bit.

 

Many of the securities I own are either small-micro cap and lack the liquidity of big board stocks. One of my issues with IB is that while they'll let you margin GOOG 5:1, most sub 500m companies require 100% cash. A few days ago I questioned this policy for a specific stock. I followed up with a request to escalate it to a senior level manager and asked that they review the specific security. What do you know, they got back to me indicating that they were changing the thresholds for that security. So much for automation and shitty customer service.

 

I was not aware that one person could request or initiate reviews for a given stock. Now I know. Figured I'd pass along in case others did not. If others have any tips or advice on ways to get better results/negotiate with brokers perhaps here would be a useful place to share them with others.

[muscleman]

Thought this may be a helpful thread.

 

Given the dearth of complaints on Interactive Brokers, today I had a positive experience that to be honest, surprised me a bit.

 

Many of the securities I own are either small-micro cap and lack the liquidity of big board stocks. One of my issues with IB is that while they'll let you margin GOOG 5:1, most sub 500m companies require 100% cash. A few days ago I questioned this policy for a specific stock. I followed up with a request to escalate it to a senior level manager and asked that they review the specific security. What do you know, they got back to me indicating that they were changing the thresholds for that security. So much for automation and shitty customer service.

 

I was not aware that one person could request or initiate reviews for a given stock. Now I know. Figured I'd pass along in case others did not. If others have any tips or advice on ways to get better results/negotiate with brokers perhaps here would be a useful place to share them with others.

 

 

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.