I withdrew cash after selling two orders (commission was $7 per order). I plan to transfer the remaining stocks to Wells Fargo and sell a few more with free trades.

Free trade and no tax reporting in a retirement account is a bad habit to get into...BUT I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

I sent an email to Ameritrade complaining their 9.99 commissions wern't competitive against TradeKing, ThinkorSwim and Sogoinvest.

They replied, informing me my new commission was 7.99.

Anyone know what where TD Ameritrade ABA routing number for standard ACH transfer is posted? Not wire transfer, ACH transfer. I want to ACH push into my TDAmeritrade account, but they made it very hard to find this number.

EDIT: Call, they said can't do it unless I open a checking account with them. Really stupid.

Well, I'm nearly done liquidating and transferring my money out, and from a tactical perspective, it's been a disaster.

1) Over the weekend, I placed sell orders on my one stock and one mutual fund.
2) Both trades executed Monday. The stock earlying the morning, and the mutual fund end-of-day (didn't see it till tuesday morning on account history).
3) I had no cash "available to withdraw" until thursday, due to settlement times
4) Despite this, I attempted a withdrawal on tuesday morning doing an ACH push from TDA. It was understandably declined, although that portion of the cash remained "hidden" for a day after the declination.
5) Early-early on thursday, when I saw the funds were available, I requested a withdrawal with an effective date of Friday, again as a push from TDA.
6) Also on thursday, the cash was swept into The Reserve MMF, as it now was over $2500.
7) On Friday, the money was swept out of the MMF, and my cash balance emptied out (except for $1.30 from one day's MMF dividend). However, the funds did not appear in my Fidelity account, so I expect to see them on monday.

So, in conclusion, we had a one-week delay between sale and withdraw, combined with some false starts, confusing information, and 6 days of missed interest or dividends. By FWF rate-chasing days-of-interest-obsession standards, it was a war crime.

To be fair, I messed up by not researching the settlement dates for these sales before ordering them.

tooshy said:Also, tomorrow, I have trade orders to sell this stock and another stock that is paying dividends later this month. Hope selling the stock is not going to prevent me from claiming my dividends to Ameritrade; and as for the stock that is scheduled to pay dividends on 7/25 (oops it's July!!), if I sell before that date too bad I lose the dividend?

There are three pertinent dates for a corporate cash dividend: Date of Declaration, Date of Record, and Date of Payment.

Date of declaration is the date they issue the announcement that there will be a dividend. Basically just a notice that says you will get X amount of money for each share of stock. The date of record is the date on which you must own the stock to be counted as a shareholder and for them to total the amount of dividend to be paid to you based on the number of shares you own. The date of payment is pretty obvious. Its when they deposit the funds into your account.

The date of record is what is important to you here. Technically you can sell all of your shares of stock the next the market is open and you will still be entitled to whatever dividend you earned based on the shares you owned on the date of record. So the fact that you sold the stock before payment is a non-issue. What is an issue is that they saw you own X shares of their stock through Ameritrade as your broker. Therefore, when the dividend is paid that is where it will be paid too.

Keep in mind the above was written in regards to CASH dividends. Stock dividends (which are pointless and stupid in my opinion) would not affect you because you sold before the ex-dividend date or date of "payment".

So you are fine. Just keep in mind that your cash dividend payment will be showing up in your Ameritrade account on July 25th.

Thank you FairlightRacing Sorry for such a noob question, but you have explained it perfectly!!

May I also ask another question? Today I placed a sell order for 18 shares of a particular stock at $156.50 and the stock reached a high at $156.88, why was my order not executed? 18 shares is not a huge order.

I'm about to open a trading account: should I go with Etrade or Ameritrade? I'm leaning towards Ameritrade because I hear customer service is better and execution is faster than Etrade.

Also, any new customer bonuses out there for Ameritrade? I have found an SPG and Delta bonus, but nothing remotely close to this old $500 bonus.