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Need Help: Urgent Broker Problem (Phillip Capital: NT Brokerage, Edge Clear)
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,388
Thanks Received: 10,207
I guess they don't have an online portal where you can check your live position and margin requirement? Have 3 GC open overnight which you weren't expecting is $33k in margin - not sure whether that's significant or not to your account.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
If you see some orders that you didn't put. Don't do anything. Call your broker.
One day I wake up and I knew that I didn't have any open positions, but I saw in the platform that I was long with a nice profit in OIL Futures. I closed the trade with a market order, but two hours later I saw in the same price a short. I was drawdown ended losing 10% of the account, because the market was long. I called the broker and they said that I entered short with a market order. sheszzzzz
I had similar experience with Tradestation. I had closed my open position on MNQ right before NY close, but when I opened up the platform a few hours later (i.e. @ the open of next trading day) my daily P&L number kept changing and it looked like I still had a position open. In my case, the order execution history showed the quantity of my buy and sell orders for the day was equal, which indicated I should have been flat at the close. I took a screenshot of that order execution history, which gave me a bit of peace of mind. Later when I called support, their response was similar to what you got, and on the next day, my statement was fixed and showed I WAS flat at the close. However, it was a bummer that I incurred a small unnecessary loss on the new position I opened in order to get out of the position I didn't actually have open. I left Tradestation because of this.
First, please let me have empathy for your situation, clearly it a place that no one wants to be in.
In this particular situation, as you said, the brokerage had confirmed that they have an error in their system that causes the mistake in your trade command you set up for your account. Let hope that has already been recorded.
Second, hope that you already have something similar to this in the system you use to trade
In my case, the long position that appeared open when I should have been flat was showing a profit - not huge, but sizeable for MES. My new sell order to close out of it was actually to lock in the profit there may have been by the broker's mistake. It was the sell order I placed that resulted in a loss as the market kept going higher. I almost yelled at the support guy when he said there's nothing they could do with that loss.
Either way, I agree luck seems to be against me most of the time in trading..
Had a similar issue with by broker several months ago where trades were closed as a result of a new margin file that was added that had multiplied margin levels by a factor of 100 resulting in some clients positions being closed 🤣
In the above case, the positions were executed in the market and were not simply a reporting error. As such, the broker was forces to undo the trade at their expense as it was 100% their fault.
Anyway, lessons that I learnt:
Things to check before doing anything:
1 - Make sure the trades are real and showing up on your live system and not just a reporting error on your statement.
2 - If the trades appear to be live and are showing up on your live system, make sure you did not accidentally leave any open limit/stop orders.
Depending on your platform, the logs will show you what order type got you in to the trade.
3 - If you are certain you had no open orders and you have no idea as to how the trades could have been executed, then do nothing to flatten the open positions.
4 - Contact the support desk. They may well already be aware of the situation and advise you accordingly.
If they claim to know nothing, as long as you are 100% sure you had noting to do with the open positions, do nothing UNLESS explicitly told by the broker that as far as they are concerned, you have live open positions and you are responsible for them. In this case, take the details of the person you spoke to together with the date/time etc and then flatten the position. Then write an email stating you are querying how the positions came to be open as you believe you did not execute them and ask them to look in to it.
Follow up as per information received.
In your situation, whilst the orders you didn't recognize may have well have been an erroneous system issue, your decision to flatten the positions without first contacting support to to find out what the situation was could mean you are long the order you placed.
Depending on the broker, they could, out of goodwill, take any loss or they could say you are responsible as yo should have checked with them first if you had any doubts.
I've called the regular and emergency line 3 times and mailbox is full and it hangs up.
I got an email from NT and they said they didnt have access to my account balance, but
forwarded my email to orders to confirm I was flat. I also emailed order desk again.
I'll keep trying.
Although I have seen issues using Power Etrade. I find that the information in the History menu is accurate and current. I find some orders in a fast moving market are not accurate, they will show pending or open when in fact they are filled. The history menu reflects the finished trade. I also find that if you close and reopen the Power Etrade it will be corrected. ALSO the Order Book allows you to filter out open, saved, filled, pending etc.. orders, make certain the open orders is checked. Otherwise I would call your platinum support team, although they will pass you through quickly to the futures desk (in the case of trading GC), they will rectify and confirm your uncertain situation, which it seems you did.
I also use IB/NT and TOS. They all have there share of issues.
