The only reason why I put it here is to find out whether I am a victim or just ignorant of the way brokers deal with option positions that were exercised. Whether I am a victim or just ignorant will depend on your answer posted here. The facts are:  I had a 2 SHORT QS Option at 75 which was exercised against me on the 23 Dec 00.45 AM and I later exercised my 2 LONG QS Option at 70 on 23 Dec 9.31 AM. The broker charged me Borrow Fee for 24-27 Dec for $1102, which means instead of getting $1000 profit I turn this into a loss of $102 plus comm.  My question:  Since both long and short options were exercised on the same day one at 45 mins on 23 Dec and the later at 9.31 am on the same day, how can there be a SHORT POSITION in the stocks since both are net-off in my account ?  The answer I got from my broker and this is the point that I want to clarify.  The response I got from IB was that the initial exercise at 45 mins on 23 Dec was actually on 22 Dec (not 23 as I alleged). They refused to show me how they got 22 Dec.  This is my explanation to my Broker in reply. 4.Even if the short call and long call were exercised on different dates 22 and 23 Dec respectively, IB can only charge me for the SHORT position for one day and not from 24-27 Dec by ignoring my long call position was not there.  My Broker ignored my answer and insisted the dates are correct and therefore I was charged to borrow shares that needed to satisfy the short position on exercised. So I am lost as I do not know whether the broker is correct and they can do this by ignoring my long call position after exercised or there is something else.  I hope I have explained this clearly now and this is not an opinion as some suggested to cut my question down. This is how I responded to the broker and their silence is the reason why I am here, hoping to get clarity as to the way options long and short are settled.
123534
The only reason why I put it here is to find out whether I am a victim or just ignorant of the way brokers deal with option positions that were exercised. Whether I am a victim or just ignorant depends on the answer that I posted here. The facts are: I had a 2 SHORT QS Option at 75 which was exercised against me on the 23 Dec 00.45 AM and I later exercised my 2 LONG QS Option at 70 on 23 Dec 9.31 AM. The broker charged me Borrow Fee for 24-27 Dec for $1102, which means instead of getting $1000 profit I turn this into a loss of $102 plus comm. My question:  Since both long and short options were exercised on the same day one at 45 mins on 23 Dec and the later at 9.31 am on the same day, how can there be a SHORT POSITION in the stocks since both are net-off in my account ?  The answer I got from my broker and this is the point that I want to clarify.  The response I got from IB was that the initial exercise at 45 mins on 23 Dec was actually on 22 Dec (not 23 as I alleged). They refused to show me how they got 22 Dec.  This is my explanation to my Broker in reply.  Even if the short call and long call was exercised on different dates 22 and 23 Dec respectively, IB can only charge me for the SHORT position for one day and not from 24-27 Dec by ignoring my long call position was not there.  Further Facts:  My Broker ignored my answer and insisted the dates are correct and therefore I was charged to borrow shares that was need to satisfy the short position on exercised. So I am lost as I do not know whether the broker is correct and they can do this by ignoring my long call position after exercised or there is something they had not tell me. That is the reason I came to this site soliciting answers from those who know more than I do or had experienced the same.  I hope I have explained this clearly now and why would I want to give an opinion when I am looking for an answer ?
28134
In the United States, whenever a customer places an order, will the broker always execute that trade on the market?  Do brokers just maintain a "reservoir" of popular stock, and hand them out to customers at market price instead of going to the exchange?  In other words, do people ever just buy/sell assets from their broker, instead of through their broker?
122130
Let's say I buy some stock. Two weeks later it pays a dividend which is reinvested in fractional shares of the stock. The next day I sell all shares at a loss. Would this be considered a wash sale?  suggests not, but I've found sources that say otherwise. If I had dividend reinvestment enabled but want to sell multiple positions soon, how can I avoid wash sale rules (other than not selling at a loss)?
67444
I sold 250 shares of a stock at a loss of (-1,000).  2 weeks later bought a single put contract (100 shares) n the same stock.  If I sell the put option for profit a few days later, is this a partial wash sale?  If so, how do I calculate it? (IRS)
23652
I was reading this article about S&amp;P 500 short ETFs:     and I was confused when it said: "investors should note that such products are suitable only for short-term traders as these are rebalanced on a daily basis". What is ETF rebalancing exactly? and why does it make these ETFs unsuitable for long-term short trading?
27983
If I believe a stock will go up, I buy the stock. If I believe a stock will go down, I short the stock. If I believe a stock will neither go up nor down, what do I do? How do I profit from a non-movement in stock price? I think I might be able to profit by selling a naked put and a naked call option with a strike price equal to the current stock price. Is this a valid method? Are there other methods?
88458
Note: This question is erroneously marked as a duplicate. It concerns a very specific situation with unfulfillable market orders in very illiquid markets, one that no other discussion here has covered. Related questions are addressed at the end.  TL;DR This is the entire order book:  __________________________________________________ |___________Buy__________|__________Sell__________| |  Time |  Price | Quant |  Time |  Price | Quant | |       |        |       | 10:05 | market |   1   | |       |        |       | 10:00 | $10.00 |   1   | |_______|________|_______|_______|________|_______|   There's an incoming buy order for 1 share, limit price $11. Which order gets matched and at what price?    With the above order book, if someone came in and placed a buy order for 1 share at limit price $9, I assume it matches the market order and trade is executed at $9. Straightforward. If instead the buyer placed a buy order with limit price $11, would it match the limit order or the market order?  Answering by determining "price" of unfulfilled market order  When the incoming order is a market order and there are only limit orders on the books, it's clear how to price it: based on the best bid or ask. But that doesn't help us here.  One option is that if we can figure out what to consider as the "price" for the unfulfilled market order on the books, we can decide based on price/time priority.  The possibilities are:   Price market order at best ask: $10. Now we have two orders at the same price, so the earlier-placed one gets it: the limit order. But this seems unfair. The trader placing the market order is clearly willing to go below $10, so they should get the trade! Price market order at best bid: $11 or undefined? On the one hand, the incoming buy order is at $11, but on the other hand, by definition an incoming order isn't on the books yet, so there is no "best ask". If it were $11, the buy order would be matched with the $10 limit order, even if the market order had been placed first! Seems unfair that an earlier-placed market order would lose out to a limit order. Price market order at last traded price: let's say $11. Again the market order would unfairly lose out to the limit order here. Price market order at $0.01 better than best ask: $9.99. Okay, this works. But we can't simply treat it as limit price $9.99 because this market order would match an incoming buy order with limit price $9.   Always matching market orders first  As @Dheer's answer suggests, one approach is to simply match market orders first no matter what. This makes a lot of sense, though we still need to figure out at what price does the trade executes. Clearly not the buyer's limit price of $11, because they'd get a worse deal than the limit order on the books. So, $10? $9.99? Last trade price, or opening price (but no more than $10)?  What if the incoming buyer placed a market order instead. At what price do you match two market orders - same as the answer to the above?  I guess this comes down to specifications for individual exchanges, but I'm wondering if there's a standard here or a way to approach it from basic rules that clears up all these situations.    Edit: Some specifics of how limit orders are matched is discussed at  This question is not a duplicate of that - my question is specifically about how an incoming limit order is matched when the other side of the order book has an unfulfilled market order. This case is not discussed at all by various existing questions, which only discuss matching incoming orders when there are sufficient limit orders already on the books.  Other relevant discussions that don't directly address these questions but are good background reading:         Another edit:  According to this answer , some or all markets will reject incoming market orders if there are no orders on the books to match it to, so the situation I describe in this question wouldn't be possible in the first place. I don't have any sources to back this up but if someone can confirm or contradict this we can probably settle this question.
81810
I never understood Puts or Calls. Could anybody explain it like I were a child?
107839
I had about $10.5K in my Fidelity 401K account invested in their target fund. I started it a year ago. This is my first time with investing in the stock market.  For the past 2-3 months, it keeps going down. Now it's at $9K. Lost $1.5K.   I don't need this money for next 20 years. Question is, is this normal? Should I pull the money out? I had seen the fluctuations in the last year, but that was like losing $200 to $300 and coming back up. But for the last few months, it keeps going down.   What's your advice?
108244
As days tick off of call options, time value decays. My question is does that happen automatically at 9:30AM at market open or does it get continuously deducted as the day ticks on?
80220
Stock A has a bid price of $100.08, an ask price of $100.10 and a last trade price of $100.  I take that to mean that if I buy the stock at $100.10 then I will have lost a total of two cents. How does a person make a profit when buying and selling stock?  Do I wait until the bid price is higher than the ask price that I paid? I hope that I don't confuse anybody because I'm pretty confused myself.
63582
Some types of brokerage accounts allow the stock broker to lend my shares to short sellers (probably without needing to notify me). Do I incur any risks when I sign up for such accounts? Is there any risk that I can lose my shares? If there are risks, how am I compensated for the risk (e.g. higher interest rates on idle cash, a small share of the commissions from the short seller, etc.)?
32116
I was talking with my parents and they told me they have been buying 30 year  at $100 every 2 months with an interest rate of 4%. Because it is an EE bond, it does not pay a monthly coupon. So if we look at a single bond they bought, they would get $4 per year. Does it pay to buy the bond if we assume inflation is 2.5%? (I have seen a lot of equations use 2% as a moderate inflation rate. I am using 2.5% because it seem more realistic/robust)  ($4/year * 30years) + $100 = $220 future value  (1 - 0.025) ^ 30 = 46.78% buying power in 30 years  So taking the $220 of the future dollars and multiplying it by our inflation rate gives   $220 * 0.4678 = $102.93 which is a 2.93% return over 30 years, which in turn is a 0.096% (calculation -1 + (1 + 0.0293) ^ 1/30) annual rate of return on their investment which is worse than what some banks offer.   Is there something I'm missing, something I calculated wrong (like the bond value when it matures), or did I make a bad assumption? It looks like it isn't worth buying a bond unless the coupon/rate is close to double digits.  edit: As far as I know, my parents aren't using the money that is being paid out from the bond. It is sitting in an account and they plan on withdrawing the full amount when the bond matures. So every $4 they get they technically aren't reinvesting anywhere. They have never invested in the stock market besides their 401k contributions.   This question more pertains to pure bond overall return (after 30 years) vs savings vs inflation. No reinvestment for compounding.
120332
I shorted a particular stock which resulted in $10,000 being deposited into my Interactive Brokers account. I then put all of that $10,000 into VTI (total stock market index). Basically making the bet that the stock I shorted will perform worse than the total stock market.   I assumed I would be charged some sort of interest or fees for using that money, however it appears that I am not being charged at all. Are there really no costs for doing this?
36805
For example, if the ex-dividend date is next Monday, and I buy the stock on next Monday, would I get the dividend? Or would the person who sold the stock to me get the dividend?
101704
I have a 10 stock portfolio and considering market conditions that are on the rise when this question in being asked, a few of them did hit their 52-week high price.  I would like to call myself a long term investor and I do not like to trade so much. If I take "Buy low sell high" as gospel then this is in my opinion a good selling position.  On one hand, I think I should lock my profit because stocks don't hit a 52-week high every day, but on the other hand, there is nothing wrong with the company and it is very well positioned to go up even further.  Any suggestions?
81554
I am trying to fully understand how ETFs work. For the sake of simplicity, let us restrict ourselves to physical replica ETFs. Let us suppose that an ETF follows an index which tracks three stocks: Alice Enterprises (A), Bob Industries (B) and Charlie's (C). We want to invest 1000$. The prices of each individual stock are 100$ (A), 10$ (B) and 1$ (C). The index weights at this moment are 60% (A), 30% (B), 10% (C). If I am not mistaken, when we buy a fund tracking this same index, the fund manager will automatically buy 600$ of A, 300$ of B and 100$ of C. Now, if we buy an ETF the underlying process is unclear to me. I understand the concepts of authorised participant and NAV spread. If A increases its value to 110$, authorised shareholders will first withdraw shares of A from the ETF and sell those shares, and then they will buy the ETF, pushing the ETF price upwards. This way the ETF price is automatically regulated and the authorised shareholders earn a profit. Everybody is happy. In contrast to a fund, when we buy an ETF we are not generally buying ETF shares from the ETF manager. Instead, we are buying ETF shares from another investor. Therefore... as I understand it, no new shares are really bought. And thus, following the process above, if we buy the ETF we push its price upwards. This again creates a &quot;gap&quot;, this time the price of the ETF is momentarily higher than its underlying assets and, therefore, authorised shareholders will sell ETF shares and buy shares of A, B and C. So... an ETF manager only buys a fixed amount of shares when the ETF is created? I want to know if I am correct in this reasoning about how the basics of physical ETFs work. I have tried to keep things as simple as possible. I understand that there will be lots of quirks and quincks, and it is great if these are elaborated in the answers.