Man, what a dumb a**

I pass this on for those that trade. Thirty minutes before the close today I liked where one stock was on my watch list so I decided to purchase some. I did a rough calculation in my head, rounding off the share price and dividing it into the cash balance in my investment account. Unfortunately I rounded a little too much and my order was placed even though it took my cash account into negative territory. I had assumed the website would alert me before placing the order that this would happen, but apparently not.

Now I probably could have wired some money to cover it (huge fee), or call them and explain and see what the consequences are for having a negative balance (fees and interest, if I remember correctly from the legalese). Since the stock didn’t move much after I had bought it I decided to sell a little bit of what I just bought to put me in positive cash. Total cost—a transaction fee plus the difference between purchase and sell price, or around $11.

A small amount, but I feel silly for doing something that could have been easily avoided. And I wanted to pass it on as a cautionary tale to those that assume your trader’s website or software will always catch such an occurrence.