I’m testing out basic trades on a paper account and suddenly have a $14K loss this morning with no explanation.
- Account value beginning of day = $97,770.00
- Buy 4000 EPD @36.18 = $144,720.00 (10:02am)
- Sell 4000 EPD @36.33 = $145,320.00 (10:29am)
- Expected account value = $97,770 - $144,720 + $145,320 = $98,370
- Actual account value = $83,838.00
- $14,532 of account value has mysteriously disappeared
The graph on my account shows as positive, but the account value shows as -14.25% on the day. Is this a bug, or some function of using margin? When I look at my account data via API, I don’t see any fees nor is there any explanation anywhere that I can find for the sudden drop.
1 Like
@Michael_Seeker The issue is you bought then sold Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (EPD). That is a Publicly Traded Partnership (PTP) and specifically is flagged ptp_no_exception in the attributes field for this asset. There are special tax withholding rules per IRS Section 1446(f) Which wentinto effect on January 1, 2023. This requires brokers to withhold 10% of the sale of the securities. Your sale price was $145,320.00 which resulted in a tax withholding of $14,532 and is immediately debited from cash. That is why you’re seeing the big loss.
Be mindful of publicly traded partnerships because many have this withholding requirement. It’s really crazy in that the withholding is 10% of the sale proceeds and not the net profit. You probably would never want to day trade a PTP which is subject to withholding.
That withholding should show up in the account activities at the end of the day.
2 Likes
Thanks for explaining what happened there. I will try and make sure I avoid trading these. Going to look into how to filter these out of the dataset.
