p10> I use TD Waterhouse. FYI. When I do that it says it's over a million dollars and I must contact them direct to place the order. I had to go down to $3 before TD would accept the order.
i) did you contact them? for large "out-of-character" orders, their automated risk review will reject anything that seems "strange" versus what's considered "normal" for your history.
they have compiled of your activity for the government (they are required to do so by law) and your activities are profiled against a set of expected behaviours (i.e., do you still act like all the other sheep or is it time to decide that you are laundering money for the terrorists?).
so .... you have to actually pick up the phone and phone 'em. at least the first time.
ii) if you phone 'em and they still wouldn't place an order for under $3, you should negotiate more forcefully.
the complete market order book has asks for PTK in the $multi-hundreds ... ten bucks is a no brainer. if your broker actually flat-out refuse to take your legitimate market order to sell? then just ask for that refusal in writing so you can send it to IIROC (hint, they'll book your order).
just keep in mind they're going to give you grief because no matter what the smiling bank salesman's outsourced helplessdesk drone says, they're not on your side, they're on their own side.
they don't want PTK to be hard to borrow, since that screws up their own ability to front-run orders or otherwise manipulate the market to their advantage. not to mention the (puny, in comparison) lost commission they might otherwise be scalping by being the bookmaker for non-institutional short activity. what, you somehow expected the brokers who run the markets to not be corrupt?
ps #1: you should not accept a trade desk fee for them to place a manual order if their online platform is incapable of doing so.
p10> This WHOLE exercise is a TOTAL waste of MY time!
ps #2: it's the Internet. nobody particularly cares about it being a TOTAL waste of YOUR time.
GLAL,
R.
