April 1, 2008

1. Short 200 OWW at $7.02
2. Cover 200 OWW at $7.19 loss: -34.02

April 2, 2008

3. Short 300 COT at $3.4801
4. Cover 300 COT at $3.35 gain: +39

April 4, 2008

5. Buy 100 GU at $15.15

April 8, 2008

6. Sell 100 GU at $14.21 loss: -94.01

This one was particularly frustrating due to the fact I could have easily sold at several points for a profit, and possibly even over $80 profit. You can see some of my thoughts in this post: Anatomy of Failure, a bad GU trade.

April 9, 2008

7. Short 100 CRY at $10.1701
8. Cover 100 CRY at $10.25 loss: -$8
9. Short 100 IMMR at $8.11
10. Cover 100 IMMR at $7.90 gain: +21.01

April 10, 2008

I should have made this trade in my SogoTrade account... I ended up paying $9 commissions...
11. Short 250 PRTS at $3.98
12. Cover 250 PRTS at $3.85 gain: +23.48

now back to SogoTrade...

April 11, 2008

13. Short 300 NTZ at $4.00

April 15, 2008

14. Buy 500 MNKD at $2.00
15. Sell 500 MNKD at $2.18 gain: +90.15

April 18, 2008

16. Short 200 NXTM at $6.46
17. Cover 200 NXTM at $6.32 gain: +28.16
18. Cover 300 NTZ at $4.05 loss: -$14.97

This NTZ trade was silly on my part; this stock was going absolutely nowhere and just trading within a range. I should have taken an early profit and gotten out.

19. Short 500 EDEN at $2.59
20. Cover 500 EDEN at $2.36 gain: +114.99

April 22, 2008

21. Buy 500 MNKD at $2.08
22. Sell 500 MNKD at $2.10 gain: +10.60

Hmmm... just about out of free SogoTrade trades by now ain't I?

In order to avoid the SEC pattern day trader rule in case I want to liquidate my position intra-day, I do the next trade with Zecco, paying $9 roundtrip commissions...

April 23, 2008

23. Buy 500 CPSL at $3.66
24. Sell 500 CPSL at $3.7001 gain: +11.05

This trade was annoying, because I should have done 1 of 2 things: either sold into an early spike for gains closer to $50, or waited it out for a later spike, which did come despite the fact I got scared out of the trade.

April 24, 2008

25. Buy 500 CPSL at $3.6999

Back in CPSL again, and too close to the middle of its current range.

April 25, 2008

26. Sell 500 CPSL at $3.65 loss: -$34

April 28, 2008

27. Short 300 NXTM at $6.36
28. Cover 300 NXTM at $6.22 gain: +$42.20

This NXTM cover is where my free trades in my SogoTrade account ran out. It was good while it lasted, and I'd be down an extra $75 without those free trades!

April 30, 2008

29. Buy 500 MNKD at $2.25
30. Sell 500 MNKD at $2.49 gain:+$114

Account Balances

Zecco: $2514.35
SogoTrade: $2916.24
Current Total: $5430.59
Total Original Capital: $5250
Current Total $ Return: +$180.59
Current Total % Return: +3.44%
$ Change in April: +$309.64

My net change for the month of April was +309.64, which despite having some good luck, was largely because of a better definition and application of my strategy. However, please note that without the copious free trades from SogoTrade and Zecco, I would probably be sitting at a loss simply due to transaction costs. I have made well over 60 individual trades since opening my brokerage accounts; even if all of those were $3 SogoTrade commissions, I'd be sitting at +$0 and likely be posting a negative return.

It's kind of funny that most of my good trades have ended up in my SogoTrade account. Of course, since my SogoTrade account was opened much later, and I didn't start getting a strategy together until early last month, it's not surprising. Also, SogoTrade has much better short inventory than Zecco, so sometimes I am unable to make profitable short trades in my Zecco account purely because I can't borrow the shares I need from Penson.

Doesn't just seeing Anthony Hopkins make you feel warm and fuzzy?

One individual wanted to get into contact with another commenter, and so I helped him do so, and he also supplied me with some more information about Ingram.

Apparently, the guy that left a comment about having lunch with George in Chicago sparked the interest of the gentleman I was in contact with. According to him, George is violating the terms of his probation and he should still be under house arrest in San Antonio, TX.

He also led me to this write-up on George Ingram III in an oil industry newspaper. It's very revealing to say the least, but you'll have to pay five bucks if you want to read it. It discusses his attempt to take control of Petroecuador, Ecuador's state-run oil company, through some sort of ridiculous scheme where he would put 'no money down.' He also made very ambitious claims regarding potential future increases in oil production. Of course, if the deal went through, Ingram's Denver-based company Global Intelligence Corporation would receive a $155-mil contract to provide "data systems [based on] secretive decision software software supposedly in use by the US Department of Defense."

Central to all of his schemes are his ready promises of vast amounts of cash. However, this is cash that he doesn't have access to at the moment - because according to him it is tied up in illiquid foreign investments.

At least two Ingram relatives say his claims of great wealth and secretive government links are pure fantasy... "There was no big inheritance," says one cousin: "It's a fairy tale. The whole family is mystified."

"He's one of the biggest liars ever created, or he's a man of incredible means," says Texas lawyer Edward Watt. Watt won a $50,0000 judgement against Ingram in 2003 for unpaid legal bills, despite elaborate counter-claims Ingram raised, and lost. Watt says he does not expect to be paid, convinced Ingram is un-collectable.

MF Smith blasted [Ingram's claims of great wealth in his chapter 11 bankruptcy filing] as "incomplete, inconsistent, and unverifiable" and noted Ingram did not own a car, could not pay the $850 bankruptcy filing fee and his house had been foreclosed in 2000. "What is an individual with a net worth of $1.7-bil doing in bankruptcy?"

Edward C. Bahl

One commenter named 'Denis Robinson' with an e-mail address tied to globalintelcorp.com is most likely Ingram himself. Global Intelligence Corporation (GIC) is the fraud shell company that Ingram set up in order to facilitate the 'investments' he attempts to con out of people. The most amusing part as far as I am concerned is that the company purports to be an expert in 'Business Intelligence' - something I know more about than I would like.

This 'Denis Robinson' attempts to slag the name of a one Edward C. Bahl, who apparently was just another one of George's victims, along with such information-age stalwarts as Verizon and IBM.

Verizon was never paid [for funding a Global Intelligence Corporation operation] and the hardware disappeared. Ingram blamed his employees for stealing, says Edward Bahl, whose firm was stuck wtih $100,000 in unpaid consultant billings. . . "I should have known then that Ingram was a fraud," says Bahl, who went on to help Ingram found GIC in Denver, funding much of that development by maxing out his own credit cards. Ingram blames Bahl for GIC's downfall.

Ingram is often lucky in that his victims would rather not admit to their being conned out of lock, stock, and barrel and thus sometimes do not file formal complaints.

Oh yea, what about good old American PureTex Water Corporation that had such big plans to open the 'World's Largest Bottled Water Plant' in Texas?

PureTex's only "asset," says Bahl, may be the gold-plated board Ingram persuaded to lend their names to the venture. They have included former Space Shuttle pilot and Marine Gen. Charles Bolden, ex-NASA Johnson Space Center head George Abbey, president Michael Frazier of Houston Investment bank Simmons & Co, and Fulbright & Jaworski law partner Howard Wolf.

White Collar Psychopath? (a clinical definition)

some consider the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath

My article on George Ingram III has been one of my favorite bits of this website to date. It was just a random and idle afternoon that led me to post the story, but little did I know about the effect that this slimy individual has had on people.

Commenter after commenter has come out of the woodwork to tell us about the lies and shady deals that George Ingram has perpetrated. Interestingly, it would appear that George Ingram himself has now commented on my story about him.

It appears George left a huge pile of pure hogwash under the name of 'mhjacks2' - an obvious attempt at appearing to be the author of the website. Note the title of the comment 'I was wrong about George'. Who is this guy trying to fool?

so why do I think it's George himself?

When I looked to see the e-mail attached to this comment that attempts to do damage control, it was gx.ingram@georgeingram.net!!

Here is a link to the WHOIS query for georgeingram.net - it's not very informative. Private registration under 1&1 Internet, Inc. located in Chesterbrook, PA.

The lengths this guy will go to are amazing. Nice try Georgie-boy. Spamming my comments will get you nowhere, except perhaps an IP ban if you get really annoying.

Update 4/15/2008: Zecco has people griping in their own forums now - and they said it better than I ever could have: (reprinted for perpetuity)

I tried logging in Monday morning - and failed; After about and hour, I gave up for the day and went about my business. Something similar happened early in Zecco's life, so I figured It's just a start-up problem.

However, that being said - Zecco should be nearly out of the start-up stage. Zecco has an Official Notification out regarding the website being offline and a offhand reference to misleading default "scheduled maintenance"/404 page - An internal review is needed - and not of the technical dashboard problem.

The Friday update was scheduled and advertised ahead of time - meaning that Zecco should not have been surprised with the consequences.

Picking Friday for updating is a smart move on IT's part. Not having a secondary system in place to rollback production changes is unacceptable for a real-time website. I highly suggest IT or management review system update policies to ensure that a plan is in place to rollback changes instantly.

In IT, updates are a part of life. With that in mind, we know that unanticipated consequences of an update are also part of life. However, for real-time systems, clear oncall/quick chain-of-command, multiple response teams & backup servers running alternate versions are part of life(or should be) - in 2008 it's cheap to use virtual servers as backups running proven older versions with proven older routing configurations.

and also from the same forum thread:

I've called at least once a week, every week complaining about the matter of fact attitude zecco seems to have about keeping it's system up at trading times. It's VERY clear these are server errors and crashes (I'm retired from an IT career) Denying these server failures only fuels my fire that I'm dealing with a bunch of liars that only care about numbers. I trade options which generate revenue for zecco/penson everytime I click the mouse.

Today, I'm making arrangements to transfer my account to anywhere else. I'm done with sloppy management and unprofessional IT people. I suggest all of you follow suit.

Allen Reynolds Jr.

My experience:

So I get up this morning and attempt to get into my two brokers' websites.

Zecco is completely unresponsive and I have not been able to log in for over an hour since the markets opened today!

I thought SogoTrade was fine - until it decided to do this to me while I was watching my NTZ position:

At least I didn't have an open position in Zecco... unfortunately I do have a somewhat precarious position of 300 short shares of NTZ that I'm holding in my SogoTrade account, which is sitting at a minor loss, but if it moves against me even more... I'd like to at least have a stop order in place. If I would have known SogoTrade was so worthless I would have put my stupid protective stop in, jeebus!

I guess with Zecco and SogoTrade you get what you pay for. Maybe one of these days I might be able to get an actually worthwhile broker that I can rely on. These have not been my first connectivity issues with either broker, and Zecco has proven itself to be particularly unreliable.

Is this their way of sticking you for the cost of 'broker-assisted' trades that you can make by calling them up?

At least some brokerages have the integrity to not make you pay more for a phoned-in trade; maybe because they realize that a lot of those phone-ins will be because their web-platform is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WORTHLESS?

I was finally able to get to the Zecco homepage without simply being unable to connect - they say the site is down for scheduled maintenance!

SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE ON MONDAY MORNING RIGHT WHEN THE MARKETS OPEN

Scheduled maintenance my butt - what broker would be so dumb as to schedule maintenance at possibly one of the most crucial trading times? Sounds like someone puked all over their servers, or they're using IT slave labor from foreign countries that have no clue about market hours.

Cost for Zecco phone-in trade: $20
Cost for SogoTrade phone-in: $27

For reference:
Zecco Brokerage Account Review - yeah, decent execution if you can actually place any orders.
SogoTrade Brokerage Account review - supposedly NXTM was on their short list on last Friday, but I was unable to short it and received no explanation why I was unable to do so (their customer service has been worthless in responding to this issue).

Long story short - if you're more active than you are completely and utterly dead, you might not want to choose either of these brokers.

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

Go check out this -$116,736.90 loss in a Forex account.

And to top it off, these losses were made with borrowed money!

Ouch ouch ouch.

What I'm curious about is whether he had any sort of hard stop where if he lost X amount of money, he wouldn't let himself trade anymore. I'm guessing not. Also, is this death by a thousand cuts or the result of multiple big blowups? (thousand cuts would at least imply some sort of risk management system)

I assume that these excess losses were caused by the inherent use of leverage within the Forex market. Leverage is icky for beginning traders, stay away. You have to have very solid risk management to begin using leverage.

Although my account is down from my initial deposit, I think if my losses get around $500 I will probably freak out and stop trading. Trading is fascinating and all that, but my goal is to NOT LOSE MONEY.

This guy made a huge mistake - he was trading with money that he could not afford to risk. His mom's money, his broker's money, his bank's money - all possibly the worst sources of capital possible. He was compounding leverage; not only was he trading in a leveraged market, he was trading borrowed funds!

Certainly makes me feel quite a bit better about the -$94 loss I had on my GU trade the other day. However, that loss still lies far outside the bounds of my risk model, and represents a failure on my part in enacting my methodologies.

I have received my first bit of comment spam. I feel vindicated. You don't know you're a real website until you get some comment spam!

wtf is comment spam?

Comments on stories for websites are an excellent source of information. Sometimes there is garbage in there though, and you have to filter through it, but sometimes the best information from a given source is not in the actual article that the author wrote, but in the responses from the general public. My favorite is when a person tells a life story that illustrates the point of the article, or perhaps brings new illumination to unexplored areas.

Comments are also an excellent way for unscrupulous internet advertisers to promote whatever website they're trying to make money off of, as most comment sections of websites allow for hyper links and so forth.

One way to efficiently do this is to spam websites' comment forms. A shady programmer somewhere will create a computer bot that will interface with the comment form and automatically post links back to the various shady websites that the computer bot is programmed to promote. The reason 'captchas' (scrambled messages you have to type to verify your humanity) were invented was to differentiate human users from these kinds of 'bots'.

so why are you happy bots are posting pr0n spam on your site?

I originally made the comments form totally open so that anyone that wanted to comment would have low barriers of entry. I often think about commenting on other sites, but they usually make it a hassle, so I often don't bother.

However, that decision left me open to bots. The reason I'm excited that I got them is because it indicates that my site has enough exposure for one of those stupid programs to be able to find my site and start spamming it. Interestingly, it was only my favorite article on the site so far that attracted comment spam - good 'ol Georgey Ingram. It makes sense that his stench would attract other carrion feeders.

Yay for milestones!

So I've been feeling a bit more positive lately that I might be getting closer to breaking even, and possibly a profit!

Unfortunately my inexperience once again brings me to my knees.

I went long 100 shares of GU at $15.15 per share at 12:16 on 4/4/2008

Using the last after hours transaction price, I am -$125 on a single trade. This is far outside my R value for this trade of about $30. Because I have held the position for much longer than anticipated, the appropriate R value increased beyond my risk/reward tolerance for this trade - an indication I should have exited the trade.

This is a clear sign that I need to be using hard stops more frequently. This trade in combination with others I have been making lately also shows a pattern of not taking profits when I should.

I could have even exited on Friday with a profit in the $15.40-15.50 range when it was failing to break its previous $15.50 high, However there were no clear indicators at that time on Friday.

I became greedy this Monday morning watching the premarket bids and asks, and GU failed to transact much above $16 in the early minutes on low volume - clear sign to exit the trade profitably that I did not take. It would appear the price spike this morning was a short-covering rally which is an ideal point to be selling into. Damn my inexperience!

Even after failing to exit the trade after the morning tumble, I could have still existed at a brief resistance point of $15.50ish that stabilized briefly in the early morning.

Also, I could have exited at an small loss midday today when the price was ranging between about 14.80 to 15.10 - this loss would have made sense to take because of the very low relative midday volume of GU at this point. Yet another signal that I ignored, much to my detriment.

A hard stop at $14.75 would have given me a $40 wound, but that pales compared to the $125 in losses I am sitting on.

One can only hope that as they live, they will learn.

NASD Rule 2520 bugs me sometimes. It's a real mixed blessing. On one hand, it keeps me from trading too much and really considering each and every one of my decisions. However, sometimes I'd like to be able to re-enter and scale in or out. At my current level, I would not allow myself more than 5 trades in 5 business days, but the Pattern Day Trader rule is even more restrictive than that, at its 'acceptable level' of 3 daytrades every rolling 5 business days.

However, if you really want to, you can have the ability to avoid the pattern day trader rule. Simply have more than one brokerage account. Since I already have both a Zecco Account and a SogoTrade account, I can do up to 6 intra-day positions every rolling 5 business days. I don't believe I will take advantage of this fact.

Apparently the reason this is possible is because the pattern day trader rule only applies to individual accounts, not individuals. If anyone knows that this is not the case, please let me know. The only commentary I turned up in a simple web search was on this random website.

March was an interesting month. I saw my losses deepen while I simultaneously started using my 25 free trades up from SogoTrade. It's quite fortunate that I didn't have to pay commissions for this month. When I'm dealing with perhaps twice the size that I'm comfortable dealing with now, it might not be such a big deal.

As it was, I learned this month that I need to size my positions more appropriately so that my trades do not control my behavior. Also, I was using AMD largely as an index proxy, and this methodology started to have no edge as AMD started diverging from tracking the indexes (particularly XLF) and slowly sank beneath the waves.

Worthy of note is that I went into this month holding 300 shares of JMBA long that I originally purchased at $3.05 a share.

March 4, 2008

1. 10:53 Buy 250 AMD @ 6.50
2. 11:50 Sell 250 AMD @ 6.51 Net Gain: $2.47
3. 12:21 Buy 250 AMD @ 6.52
4. 15:07 Sell 250 AMD @ 6.61 Net Gain: $22.47

March 5, 2008

5. 11:50 Buy 100 COIN @ 15.9699
6. 13:10 Sell 100 COIN @ 16.12 Net Gain: $14.99

March 11, 2008

7. 10:36 Buy 300 AMD @ 6.17
8. 11:24 Sell 300 AMD @ 6.27 Net Gain: $29.95

March 12, 2008

9. 11:35 Buy 300 AMD @ 6.61

March 13,2008

10. 10:28 Sell 300 AMD @ 6.51 Net Loss: -$30.05
now there are commissions...
11. 11:08 Short 300 AMD @ 6.50
12. 12:03 Cover 300 AMD @ 6.63 Net Loss: -$48.02

March 14, 2008

13. 12:15 Buy 300 AMD @ 6.45
14. 12:44 Sell 300 AMD @ 6.40 Net Loss: -$24.05
15. 9:48 Sell 300 JMBA @ 2.31 Net Loss -$226.53 (I held this one way too long and should have cut it at <$100 loss. Rookie mistake.)

March 17, 2008

16. 11:15 Buy 300 AMD @ 6.35

March 18, 2008

17. 14:51 Sell 300 AMD @ 6.39 Net Gain: $2.95 (when will the AMD garbage trades stop?)

March 19, 2008

Now we're on SogoTrade... free trades again but no stops! Unfortunately I briefly continue my madness before massaging my strategy into place. I also start trading more than one position at once, which is VERY BAD for my novice state. Henceforth, I will trade only one position at a time. Also, I begin to learn to work with more appropriate position sizing, but not before some mistakes...

18. 11:51 Buy 300 AMD @ 6.30
19. 13:35 Short 300 HALO @ 5.75
20. 15:39 cover 300 HALO @ 6.00 Net Loss: -$75.02

March 20, 2008

21. 12:25 Short 100 CHNR @ 17.20
22. 15:24 Cover 100 CHNR @ 16.95 Net Gain: $24.98

March 24, 2008

23. 10:06 Short 200 VVTV @ 5.81
24. 10:45 Cover 200 VVTV @ 6.10 Net Loss: -$58.02
25. 15:45 Sell 300 AMD @ 6.20 Net Loss: -$30.03

is the AMD madness over?

March 26, 2008

26. 9:55 Short 300 BPAX @ 3.31
27. 11:26 Cover 300 BPAX @ 3.16 Net Gain: $44.98

March 27, 2008

28. 10:34 Buy 100 SOLF @ 13.14
29. 12:08 Sell 100 SOLF @ 13.80 Net Gain: $65.98

March 28, 2008

30. 14:16 Short 300 BPAX @ 4.70
31. 15:33 Cover 300 BPAX @ 4.50 Net Gain: $59.98

Conclusion

From these numbers, I had realized losses of -$222.97 for March 2008. With the addition of $90.09 in realized gains from February, I have lost -$132.88 since I started trading.

However, I must have messed up somehow, because my account balances don't quite jive with my trading journal.

Account Balances
Zecco: $2588.68 (deposits of $2750)
SogoTrade: $2533.40 (deposit of $2500)

So according to this, I'm down -$127.92 - I'm not sure really sure where I messed up my numbers although I do know there's a little bit of money market interest floating around.

Lessons Learned

Only be present if there is opportunity.

If you feel like you need a second opinion on whether to take profit right then and there, TAKE THE PROFIT.

Size positions correctly. Too big and there's too much perceived risk. Correctly sized positions lead to rational decision making.

Also, although I don't like SogoTrade, I do like the little account balance graph they give you.

Thus ends my trading month of March. I would be violating the pattern day trader rule to make a trade on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

5/2/2008: SogoTrade now has only a $500 account minimum, and you still receive 25 free trades.

UPDATE: go here to see some issues I have had with SogoTrade

If you're having trouble deciding on a broker, this article of things to think about when choosing a discount broker can give you some food for thought.

Although I have been trading for only a couple months, I have opened up two separate brokerage accounts. One is with Zecco, and the more recently opened account is with SogoTrade.

SogoTrade is a very basic broker. They have an excellent pricing structure, but there are only two basic things you can do - buy stock or short stock.

The platform in general caters to the investor that is not particularly active, even though they offer a $1.50/trade with $10 subscription plan for more active traders (versus the $3 trades, you break even after 7 trades in a 30 day period). They currently do not (although they say they will soon) offer stops, stop limits, or trailing stops. (UPDATE - SogoTrade now offers stop and stop limit orders as of 4/11/2008) This is very important, especially when you have a position that you want to manage while you are away from the markets. Also, SogoTrade does not offer IRAs. One perk for long-term investors is that SogoTrade offers free DRIP for most major issues. This could potentially be a great place to store all your dividend-producing ADRs so you can harvest foreign tax deductions.

There is a $2500 minimum opening deposit, and currently they are running a promotion where they give you 25 free trades to use up within 90 days. This is the main reason I decided to open an account. Another reason is that after I use up the 10 free Zecco trades each month, I'd rather pay $3 a trade than $4.50 a trade, and conceivably could pay as low as $1.50-$2.50 a trade. Unfortunately, the limited choice of orders makes using the account somewhat frustrating for my purposes.

I do like their flash watchlist, even if it could be quite better and a bit less delayed. It's interesting, because now that I have 2 brokerage accounts, I have two sources of quotes, and sometimes they don't match up with each other. Sometimes volume numbers will take quite a while to sync up.

one thing to note if you like the penny stocks

For SogoTrade trades of stocks priced less than $1.00, an additional fee of ½ of 1% of principal value applies.

OUCH! At least the limit is $1. TradeKing has its lower limit at $2 for extra commission charges on cheap stocks.

Also, no Pink sheets or OTC BB stocks

one thing that does really bug me about SogoTrade

Their marketing photographs. Am I supposed to identify with these d-bags?

ranked in order of awfulness
• 
  WHY ARE YOU SO HAPPY YOU'RE BUYING STOCK?!

  INVESTING/TRADING IS NOT A FREAKING BEACH PARTY

  take your nice, clean, matching white collared shirts and go home

  and learn how to shave

• 
  If SogoTrade actually has any customers that could have stepped right out of this photograph, please direct me to their residence so I can thieve the valuables that their wealthy parents have provided them with.

  Also, grow some balls dude. Your woman's teats have more testosterone.

• 
  Am I supposed to take it that opening a SogoTrade account will allow me to frolic in the park and on the beach all day? Hope always sells I suppose.

  Also, there is NO WAY that kid came squirting out of these two.

shameless plug

If anyone wants to sign up for a SogoTrade account let me know... I can get 25 free trades for referring you! And you will receive my, uh, eternal gratitude! You gotta meet the account minimum of 2500 and make at least one trade for me to get my 25 free trades. Of course, you also get 25 free trades. think about it! :)

Just click on this link to get 25 free trades when you sign up with SogoTrade, and I'll get 25 free trades too! Best of all it's only $500 account minimum now - it was $2500 minimum when I signed up.

Also, if you want something awfully similar to SogoTrade, but with a few more bells and whistles, check out SogoElite. Many of the terms are similar, however the most important point for me is that if you wish to withdraw assets to the point that your account value drops below $2500, you have to submit an ACAT form or close your account. SogoTrade simply requires a 2500 minimum opening deposit, and you have to keep the money in there for a bit (10 days maybe?) if you want to go and take most of it out later.

However, SogoElite has real charts (it's a software-based account) unlike the garbage that the web-based SogoTrade platform spits at you. That and the stop orders I want is a pretty good deal for just not being able to withdraw your account below $2500.

SogoElite is also for active traders - you can receive free real-time data on the basic plan if you make at least 10 trades per month.