Had a disconcerting WellsTrade situation occur. On 8/23 entered a buy good till canceled order for Dominion Res (D) at $50/share.
On 9/7 I got a Wells Fargo Advisors confirmation dated 8/31, showing an open order buy for D at 49.30 with a date entered of 8/31 and type ex-dividend.
The first two times I detected this with different stock open orders, I just put it down to my record keeping. But not this time.
After spending 45 min on line with a WellsTrade broker, and his conferring with management, it turns out their new brokerage system automatically reduces buy order prices by the stock dividend at the ex-dividend date.
I pressed him on how to opt out of this and he said there was a check box on the order form, but neither he nor I could find it.
I asked him how then to avoid this situation and he said check the ex-dividend date of all open order stocks and manually change the prices back AFTER they change. He had no solution to what happens if the stock trades down to the original buy price, but not the reduced price, just after the price is reduced and before the price is restored. And the order is not executed.
He said another possible solution was that WellsTrade would just issue a modification to their trading brokerage agreement.
He wrote up a complaint and said it would be looked at sometime within the next 72 hours.
To date they have not gotten back to me on a solution to this. The old system didn't change any order prices. This new system does and to date you cannot stop it.
Until WellsTrade corrects their new, in-development service, BEWARE of changed order prices.
On 9/7 I got a Wells Fargo Advisors confirmation dated 8/31, showing an open order buy for D at 49.30 with a date entered of 8/31 and type ex-dividend.
The first two times I detected this with different stock open orders, I just put it down to my record keeping. But not this time.
After spending 45 min on line with a WellsTrade broker, and his conferring with management, it turns out their new brokerage system automatically reduces buy order prices by the stock dividend at the ex-dividend date.
I pressed him on how to opt out of this and he said there was a check box on the order form, but neither he nor I could find it.
I asked him how then to avoid this situation and he said check the ex-dividend date of all open order stocks and manually change the prices back AFTER they change. He had no solution to what happens if the stock trades down to the original buy price, but not the reduced price, just after the price is reduced and before the price is restored. And the order is not executed.
He said another possible solution was that WellsTrade would just issue a modification to their trading brokerage agreement.
He wrote up a complaint and said it would be looked at sometime within the next 72 hours.
To date they have not gotten back to me on a solution to this. The old system didn't change any order prices. This new system does and to date you cannot stop it.
Until WellsTrade corrects their new, in-development service, BEWARE of changed order prices.
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