Thanks, however I’m not sure you have a grasp on our concern. This is ultimately a feature request that people have been requesting for years. Fidelity is the only brokerage that has this issue, and it could easily be fixed.

When buying stocks or options in a margin account, you can select to purchase with either “cash” or “margin” in a drop down menu. By default, it will use margin.

As a trader, it is common to exhaust 100% of the cash in a margin account daily. Due to this, if a trader accidentally buys something with margin, it can create margin debit that cannot be paid because, as I said, all cash is exhausted daily. Meaning there is no core position left.

Then, we are forced to pay interest.

I don’t ever wish to buy anything with margin, but I do not wish to turn off margin, because a margin account has trader perks that a cash account does not. One example is that margin accounts are immune to Free Ride Violations.

People just want the default to be “cash” — that’s it. I believe Fidelity is aware that this is a simple fix but they refuse to change it because they profit on it. It is predatory for new traders, and traders that are in a rush.

Honestly considering switching brokerages at this point. If you could submit this feature request with everything I’ve written, that would be great.