Scottrade nonsense

Well, I got up this morning and was going to make my investments using my new Scottrade account. I was happy to see that the stock had not gone up anymore, having seen it move upward 20% the day before when I could not buy it. I was very pumped that it was still about the same level. I plugged in the type of transaction, the Stock symbol, the shares and hit review order, and to my surprise a little warning flashes acrossed the top of the screen saying insufficient funds. This was quite troublesome, because I could see that I had 30% more in my account than what was needed to buy the stock.

I called the local office and spoke to a person there. They informed me that because I used an ACH transfer method from my bank, which by the way is virtually immediate transfer of funds from one place to another, and was buying a stock that was less than $4 a share that I would have to wait 3 days to use my money. WHAT? He said it was on their site. I looked at their site and sure enough there was some little blurb about marginalizations of stock less than $4 and that you would have to wait 3 days.

I asked this guy what the heck was going on, and he told be that stocks less than $4 a share are considered volatile, whether that is true or not is not a consideration, and that people using ACH transactions actually have 3 days to cancel them. What? I never knew that such a thing was possible. I have used this method to buy things all over the place on the Internet and it never occurred to me that it was not the safest, and most secure way for a merchant to recieve their funds immediately.

I consider this to be a clear sign that I should just bag the idea of investing in the stock market, and told the guy that I will probably(98%) going to close my account because I only opened it so I could buy the stock that was low at the moment, but will surely rise. I don't want to use the name, because I don't want the price to keep going up. Yes, this is silly but loose lips sink ships. lol In three days it will be outside of what I was willing to pay for it, if it continues to rise as it has the past couple days. I will take my Scottrade representative's knowledge of canceling ACH's and use it to me benefit and cancel the transaction, something I would never have even know possible before my call to Scottrade.