Rick, the facts you originally provided were that you had $12,000 in stocks, a debit balance of $10,000, equity of $2,000,
yet you received a maintenance call that said you had to sell out $14,000 worth of stock.
I'm assuming that all of the stocks were over $5.00 per share,
or whatever the firm's minimum requirements were.
So your account looked like this:
$12,000 LMV
($10,000) DR
_________
$ 2,000 Equity
30% maintenance requirement = $3,600
Cash needed to meet call = $1,600
Stock sales needed to meet call = $1,600 / .30 = $5,333
If you had sold $5,333 worth of stock your account
would look like this:
$6,667 LMV
($4,667) DR
________
$2,000 Equity
30% maintenance requirement = $2000, you have met the call.
So, the only thing I can think of is that, suddenly, all of the stocks in the account were raised to a 100% requirement.
By definition, you would have to sell $10,000 of the stocks in order to eliminate the debit balance:
$2,000
($ 0)
________
$2,000 Equity
But there's no way you could ever, ever have to sell $14,000 worth of stock given the facts you provided. The only way you can ever end up with a negative equity in the account is with short sales or naked options.
So I'm baffled! Unless I've missed something, it certainly looks like an error on the firm's part. |
