What does it say about a brokerage platform when they cannot enter the proper multiplier for securities in their system?
Chemtrade example:
CHE.DB.E.TO:
This is correct – a sample order of 1000 par value at 80 cents = $800 plus commission. Hurray!
Chemtrade example:
CHE.DB.F.TO:
This is incorrect – a sample order of 1000 par value at 100 cents = $100,000 plus commission.
Needless to say CHE.DB.F.TO can’t be traded on their system because for whatever reason they put a 100x margin multiplier on the new issue. Putting in a “10” quantity at a price between the bid-ask spread did not register on the quotation, so this is clearly a margin clearing check failure.
I’ve chatted with their support and also sent a couple emails, but have not received any satisfactory reply. They don’t seem to have any idea what is wrong.
It makes you wonder if they can’t get this right, what else will go wrong? What if this was an actual time-critical situation and saw that I could get in at a cheap price?
They are not the first. One day I got a margin call email from iTrade before the day begins. I checked the account and they say I’m borrowed a few million on a filled debenture order. Happened quite a few times. Have to call in to get it fixed. Account is basically frozen for the day, cannot do anything online.
That’s awful. It would have been even more awful had they decided to clear out the rest of your positions because of the “margin call” and then blame you for it.
That’s one thing I can say about Interactive Brokers, I’ve been using them for a very long time and never once have they had some sort of glitch like that. There was that day where the entire market feed went down but other than that, their system has been incredibly reliable. At least I didn’t attempt to buy oil futures when it went to -40.
LOL – I Can’t even do online trades for debentures thru CIBC IE – I have to phone my buy/sell orders on debentures (also writing naked options have to phone) . Am finding since covid the wait time on phone (with their special phone # for high activity traders) is now taking over 10 minutes. (the regular line apparently are taking over an hour to be answered)
Change to TD direct investing 🙂
I had the exact same issue several weeks ago. It is because they incorrectly classify the security as a stock instead of a bond. I even told them exactly what the mistake was, and they assured me it would be fixed…still isn’t fixed…questrade is great for commisions, but absolutely abysmal for customer service…I tried for over a year! to transfer a margin account “in kind” from another broker to questrade with no success. I finally gave up, liquidated everything at the other broker, took out the cash and repurchased the securities at questrade…cost me a bunch in commissions but I couldn’t take dealing with the (lack of) support from questrade
and don’t get me started about their web option trading platform! You enter your order, put in a limit price, and if you change anything! else on the order before sending it, it automatically changes your limit price to the ask price!!! Which of course is immediately filled if you send it. Cost me a bundle on one order. You have to be super, super careful using their platform before you send an order
I’ll jump on this bandwagon – Questrade is brutal. I have accounts with both Questrade and TD Directing Investing. TD is so much better, I don’t mind paying the higher trading fees as I trade infrequently…
Maybe they should take all the money they spend on TV ads bragging about how cheap they are and pour the money into the product!
Good feedback here. I have a TD account and I hate them…but they do debentures right. I had a IB account, but kept getting locked out due to “continuously moving IP” ….guess I should stop travelling. I opened a questrade account 4 yrs ago…but back then I was told I could not buy debentures…..
Finally got some feedback from Questrade. “Call the trade desk, 1-8xx-xxx-xxxx”. Good lord.