Frequently Asked Questions About Basket Trading

What is a basket?

A basket is a group of up to 50 stocks that you can trade, manage and track as one entity.

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What are the advantages of basket trading?

  • Personalized investment criteria – create baskets of stocks that fit your criteria or investment needs. For example, create baskets by sector, investment style, market capitalization, life event, your goals, etc.
  • Automated allocation – the automated allocation of basket trading allows you to quickly assign an equal dollar amount or number of shares to each security you want to purchase. Use this feature to quickly distribute your investment across multiple securities.
  • Integrated performance tracking – Because you can track the performance of basket trades as a group, baskets are useful if you want to invest in a number of securities from one sector or industry and then track the performance in your portfolio.
  • Save and review – You can save your baskets when you create them and return to them later to place your trades or make additional modifications.
  • Place multiple trades at once – buy or make multiple updates to your positions within your basket with just one order.
  • Total control – buy and sell securities from your basket at your discretion. Control the timing and tax implications of your basket transactions.
  • Specific tax lots – assign specific share tax lots to your sales online – after submitting your order.
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What are the fees, minimums and commissions when trading in a basket?

There are no additional fees for basket trading. There is a $2,000 minimum to purchase a basket, but the value of the basket does not need to be maintained at $2,000 (if the value of the stocks fall for example) and there is no minimum for subsequent orders. Commissions will be charged according to the commission schedule applicable to the account. Each purchase or sale of a security position in a basket is treated as an individual transaction and will be subject to separate transaction commissions.

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What types of orders can I place?

You can place market orders on Listed and Over-the-Counter (OTC) equities in the basket trading application.

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How do I cancel a basket?

All orders in a basket are market orders. You can attempt to cancel an individual order from the Order Details screen if an order has not executed and re-enter a new order in basket trading. However, use caution when entering the new order as most market orders receive an execution.

Cancel and Replace functionality is not available on basket trades.

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What if an order in my basket can't be executed?

Although all buy and sell orders through the Basket Trading product are market orders, there is the possibility that certain orders will not be executed. For example, if a security that you are trading as part of a basket had halted trading at the time of order entry and did not resume trading through market close, this security would not be part of your purchased basket.

The weightings on remaining positions that were purchased will not adjust to account for the un-purchased position(s). For example: You have entered a share weighted order to purchase an 11-security basket at 100 shares for each position. If one of the securities did not execute, the 100 shares that were assigned to that position will not distribute across the 10 positions that did execute, making them 110 share orders. The 10 positions that did execute will remain 100 shares each.

You can attempt to buy/sell the security that did not execute in the basket at another time. However, in all cases, unexecuted market orders will not carry over to the next trading session, they will need to be reentered if you would like them to be part of a basket or to be removed from a basket.

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How can I track gain and loss of securities in my basket?

Baskets display Unrealized Net Change detail for both purchased and saved baskets. Purchased baskets will display a current market value of the basket in its entirety as well as for individual positions. While the percent net change of a purchased basket will account for additional purchases, liquidations and certain corporate actions, it does not provide true tax cost basis of your positions within the basket.

Securities that are liquidated entirely from a basket will not be tracked in basket detail. You can view cost detail for individual positions within a basket from the Unrealized Net Change screen.

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How do I use Watch Baskets?

After you construct a basket and indicate the amount you are planning to allocate to the basket, you can either place a trade for the securities in the basket or save the basket for review, tracking or subsequent purchase. You can save up to 20 baskets in the Basket Trading application. You can continue to make adjustments to the contents of the basket before you decide to purchase it.

Watch Baskets display net change detail based on current market value versus market value as of the last time you saved the Watch Basket.

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How do I allocate my basket?

Allocation weightings for baskets can be established using Dollars, Shares, or Percentage. If you do not select an allocation method, the default allocation will be Dollars.

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Can I trade individual securities within the basket, or do I have to trade the basket as a whole?

After you purchase your basket you can buy and sell individual securities within the basket at any time.

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What about record keeping? How do I know what position is part of a basket?

The Basket Summary screen gives you an overview of all of your baskets. Basket name and Details links provide a breakdown of securities within each basket.

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