Holding and Reporting Fee

The following definitions will be used to determine if an account will be excluded from the Holding & Reporting Fee. If at least one of the following criteria is met, the account will be exempt from the fee:

• 2 billable securities transaction during the calendar period of December 15^th – December 14^th of the following calendar year

• IRAs (and other qualified plans)

• Opened less than 12 months

• Total account value (exclusive of any margin debit balance) is more than $25,000.00 as of the billing date, which will occur on December 1^st each calendar year

Index Option Exchange Fees

Effective January 1, 2024 Investrade will begin passing through index option exchange fees. The additional cost to trade select index options is listed below. These fees will be charged in addition to Investrade's standard commission schedule.

Index fees are subject to change without notice.

NSCC VAR Charges

NSCC (National Securities Clearing Corp.) VAR (Value at Risk) Charges result when a larger position is held overnight in an equity that NSCC deems to be “volatile”. The NSCC list includes stocks that have volatile price action and may change daily. The fee may be up to the dollar amount of the position held overnight charged at an interest rate of 10.50%. This fee is applied to customer accounts on a monthly basis.

Options Regulatory Fee (ORF)

Breakdowns of each rate for the individual exchanges are as follows:

Exchange Rate

• BOX – $0.00295 per contract
• CBOE – $0.0017 per contract
• C2 – $0.0002 per contract
• EMERALD – $0.0006 per contract
• MIAX – $0.0019 per contract
• MEMX – $0.0015 per contract
• PEARL – $0.0018 per contract
• PHLX – $0.0034 per contract
• SAPPHIRE – $0.0013 per contract

Total: $0.01535

The combined rate for the ORF will be $0.01535 per contract with no minimum per trade.

Updates to fees are made on a best efforts basis, however all fees are subject to change without notice. For current information and updates, please refer to the appropriate web site.

Professional User means a subscriber who:

(a)   uses the Information for more than personal investment purposes;
(b)  plans to furnish or use the Information with any other person(s) as part of any type of business activity (customer service, investor relations, public relations financial planning, etc.) even if it is outside of the Securities marketplace;
(c)   is using the Information as or on behalf of a firm, corporation, partnership, trust or association and not as an individual for personal use;   
(d)   is a securities broker-dealer, registered representative, investment advisor, investment banker, futures commission merchant, commodities introducing broker or commodity trading advisor, money manager, financial planning advisor, member of the Securities Exchange or Association or Futures Contract market, or any owner, partner or associated person of the foregoing;
(e)   is employed by a bank or an insurance company or an affiliate of either performing functions related to securities or commodity futures investment or trading activity; or
(f)    otherwise meets the definition of a professional user, as defined from time to time by any Exchange or similar Information Provider from whom the Subscriber is receiving Information.

SEC TRANSACTION FEE – NEW RATE EFFECTIVE 5/22/2024

Effective May 22, 2024, the Section 31 fee rate applicable to specified securities transactions on the exchanges and in the over-the-counter markets will increase from its current rate of $8.00 per million dollars in transactions to a new rate of $27.80 per million dollars in transactions.
See https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2024-47 for more information.

For more information on the term “charge date,” please refer to Rule 31(a)(3) and Exchange Act Release No. 49928  http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/34-49928.htm.

How to Calculate:

Multiply the sale/principal amount of the transaction by the fee rate. Truncate at the seventh place after the decimal point. Truncate the resulting figure at the fifth place after the decimal point and round up to the nearest cent (Always round up if there is a remainder).

For more information visit the FINRA web site http://www.sec.gov/divisions/marketreg/mrfreqreq.shtml.

Updates to fees are made on a best efforts basis, however all fees are subject to change without notice. For current information and updates, please refer to the appropriate web site.

Short Stock Fee

Based on the recent changes to the short stock rules and increased difficulties to borrow stock, our clearing firm, Hilltop Securities, Inc. will be passing on charges for shorting stock that they must locate outside of their firm. These stocks are typically called hard to borrow securities. The fees can be charged daily and posted to the customer’s account the following business day for settled positions.

The formula for the Hard to Borrow fee (HTB) is the rate times the principal value divided by 360 to come up with the daily charge.  The principal value of the security is calculated by taking the securities price at the end of the previous trading day then multiplied by 1.02 (102%), the figure is then rounded up to the nearest dollar amount.

Updates to fees are made on a best efforts basis, however all fees are subject to change without notice. For current information and updates, please refer to the appropriate web site.

Trading Activity Fees (TAF)

Trading Activity Fees (TAF) are passed through to customers as part of normal transaction processing.

Effective January 1, 2024, the Trading Activity Fee (TAF) rate for sales of covered equity securities will increase from $0.000145 per share for each sale of a covered equity security to $0.000166 per share, with a corresponding increase to the per-transaction cap for covered equity securities from $7.27 to $8.30. The new rate will apply to any sale of a covered equity security subject to the TAF occurring on or after January 1, 2024.

The FINRA (TAF) for option sales is currently $0.00244 per contract will increase to $0.00279 per contract and fees for covered debt securities are $0.00092 per bond will increase to $0.00105 per bond, with a maximum assessment of $0.92 per trade will increase to $1.05 per trade (based on 1,000 bonds). 

As an industry transaction standard, FINRA levies a Trading Activity Fee (TAF) on the sale of covered securities pursuant to Section 1 of Schedule A to the FINRA By-Laws. The text of the rule is available in the online FINRA Manual.

Updates to fees are made on a best efforts basis, however all fees are subject to change without notice. For current information and updates, please refer to the appropriate website.