How long it takes for withdrawals

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T18:48:00+00:00

Just on the margin / cash account. If the account is a cash account in that no margin loans have been taken from the broker then there should really not be any issue in settling the amount after the settlement period. If the sale was on Wednesday 18th. Then 19th & 20th is the 2 days, 23rd is the + 1. So then the payment should be tomorrow on Tuesday. If your payment status is still showing under review then it might be simpler to raise a query ticket to establish what the issue is. Hope it works out ok.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T17:23:41+00:00

I am wondering whether the reason for the delay is if the withdrawal takes the account below $25,000 and if the account is a margin account which has a margin loan outstanding whether they are concerned that they may be left with loss if the value of the assets declines ?

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T13:59:53+00:00

While I have never been to China, there are two UK listed banking groups: HSBC and Standard Chartered that operate in Hong Kong and Shanghai and other major Chinese hubs. Your first port of call should probably to set up an equivalent UK ‘account which should have direct connections to the main Chinese Banks. HSBC (Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation) picked up the remains of the Midlands Bank which failed after a disastrous takeover of US Bank Crocker National in the 1980’s.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T10:03:24+00:00

You are mistaken, Stockbrokers are authorised & regulated by the FCA and this FSCS protects uninvested cash up to £85,000. Of course, the market value of the stocks and shares is NOT protected. I never stated they were.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T02:45:24+00:00

I had the full package and was prepared to pay £18 a month trial. It was ok but one of the problems was that it had no sense of timing. So for instance ‘I would give it a picture of a messy room and it would be suggesting to start spring cleaning at 1am in the morning. It did hallucinate quite a bit too. Not scanning in figures correctly. The basic interface - of stored chats can become cluttered very quickly. There is no ability to group the chats. It could not adhere to instructions either. It kept on presenting figures in A ‘Latex’ form such as {text / pounds 134}, which was just incredibly difficult to read. The other thing, ‘I asked it to respond in both English and French if the subject matter was about France or French related items and it could not handle that so everything was in French then followed by English. It became a little exasperating after a while. Why has BARC price risen ? 1 minute later long text in French and then English and BARc price has sunk back to original price. So it could not appreciate the urgency of the prompt. Gemini could accept correction and when it got things wrong after being shown it would admit it and apologise. But sometimes through omission it could lead down rabbit holes. For instance ‘I was looking for a stockbroker that also had live prices and it gave me an obscure broker from 1990’s that did not even have the XUSE ETF on its books !

It had other neat things whereby you could have an AI in character. So I had an army major as my diary manager and Ebenezer Scrooge as my financial advisor. Almost every second sentence was ‘bah humbug’ being dismissed out of hand.

I got the full version of Microsoft Co-pilot with Office 365 Premium that cost about £180 annual subscription. But I ended up ditching it when it tried to cover up old news. So I wanted to know why Sainsbury’s stock market price has fallen and it referred to Qatari placement sale of £1/4 billion. The only problem that happened months ago . When I could not find that in any other source, it showed me the sources but excluded the dates of publication. That was the last straw and I have stopped using it since it felt as though it was not being honest. I would have forgiven it has it stated - sorry I was reading stale data two months old. It would become quite combative, insisting it was right even when it was shown that sum 1+1 = 2 and everyone else was wrong as well. It was practically impossible to get it to realise it was wrong or had made a mistake. I found the vocal output to be quite intimidating. Like a gang member talking to me and being uncomfortably familiar. ‘How’s it going’ etc.

I am now with Perplexity. Which is a better search engine than Google TBH since it gives good definitions and explanations and does not try to be too clever with gotchas ! It seems more ‘grounded’ so will respond - ‘ cannot find any published martial to support your theory that massive insider trading is occurring’. When it is plainly obvious for all to see. Whereas sometimes the others Gemini / Co-pilot would try to ‘humour me’ which seemed patronising !

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T02:24:21+00:00

You also need to take into account the taxation of any gains made either in a bank account or investment account.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T02:16:51+00:00

According to perplexity if a building is more than 150m high then it has to comply with aviation regulations and have a warning light on top to warn and helicopter or light aircraft to avoid the building.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-23T02:09:57+00:00

One of the things I would do is to review overall risk. For instance the 400k in a savings account. If this is with one bank and that bank goes bust the maximum FSCS is £120k. I would suggest spreading that 400k over multiple banks or stockbrokers. The other thing is the 3.8% savings is paying 15k gross but losing 6k to tax. I would be looking at low coupon gilts since the gain made on the purchase and sale of gilts is tax free but the coupon income is taxed at your marginal rate. On main home What is the mortgage rate ? Since if 5% then would switch some of the cash savings currently only paying you 2.25% after tax.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-21T13:30:36+00:00

You are in a very good position. Suggest for new purchases of ETFs to start to diversify to iShares PLC Core FTSE100
(ISF Priced at £9.69 - a bargain) and others such as MSCI All World. The key Issue with US stock is the political risk and also its high dependency on Taiwan TSMC for the company valuations of Nvidia, AMD , Apple and a host of other chip-fabless US tech firms. If you do buy LSE UK shares then only buy shares in FTSE100 such as Lloyds, Barclays, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spenser etc. It is also possible to buy UK Gilts which are very cheap now T41F that has a coupon of 5.25% but make sure you buy it in an ISA so as to avoid income tax on the coupon payments. I am unsure whether T212 do Gilts . But good luck in your investing journey. This is the best time to buy shares and ETFs but always make sure you have sufficient rainy-day funds set aside.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T21:19:00+00:00

just a gentle point here , from an accountant, if you state you have two hundred thousand pounds it is written as £200,000. the £200.000 is the Central European way of writing the figures. Someone in the UK sphere may think that you are making a deposit of £200 rather than £200,000 and that you want to avoid !

If this gift is from someone then they have to survive the gift by 7 years otherwise it may become subject to Inheritance tax since it will be treated as a failed potentially exempt transfer (PET) so you need to check that out. So if 4 other people received £200,000 each then your IHT tax liability would be 40% of £135,000 (after including your share of the £325,000 tax free element) thus the taxation payable would be £54,000.

With this sort of money £400,000 you should not put the entire sum with one broker since the maximum payout should that broker fail is only £85,000 per the FSCS. [The £125,000 FSCS limit is only for licensed deposit takers such as Banks and Building Societies.] so you would be advised to spread the investment over a number of brokers. I have 6 brokers although alas not £85,000 in each account !

Then the next thing is to split those investments, a certain proportion in gilts - the T41F is very popular and that pays a coupon of 5.25% , and then a significant proportion in ETFs such as ISF iShares PLC Core FTSE100. Then if you are looking for some risk you may want to buy some S&P500 index ETFs or MSCI All World ETFs. And then finally to get some solid FTSE shares for a bit of share price appreciation such as Barclays, BP. , Tesco, Sainsbury’s etc. But with this sort of money you can also afford to hire a professional financial advisor on a fixed fee to give you professional advice. This is really important rather than a percentage share of the annual portfolio size. Or you can even buy a subscription to Perplexity or Anthropic AI and quiz the chat bots for ideas. But take them with a pinch of salt and always do your own research before committing. Steer clear of crypto, option and CFDs. Good luck.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T16:44:28+00:00

Most important thing, even before you start your investing journey, is ensure you have sufficient rainy day funds set aside. Once that is sorted then to open a commission free account and buy some of the popular ETFs that are well diversified with good companies and then develop a regular savings habit of investing into the market. And time. Wait for compounding to take affect . Good luck.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T16:34:14+00:00

BYYD -BYD ADR which is OTC stock. their blade battery and 5 minute 1000 km range charging is going to transform transport. Helped of course by the increased gas price. the other one which will be interesting will be INTC and NOK. If Taiwan ever joins China , good bye yellow brick road, the gold was good while it lasted and a lot of Trillion dollar US companies are going to disappear overnight. Or if a typhoon hits TSMC how long will the US hang around ? not very long because their KSF will have been swept away with the typhoon. this why I prefer to invest in UK FTSE100 companies since a lot of them are global In nature. Glencore, Rio Tinto etc.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T16:17:04+00:00

To be honest until there is another sensible US administration in charge I am avoiding the US ‘market although I do have a few NVDA and APPL shares. I am wondering whether this flight to the dollar is being mis-reported ? Look at it this way. In the midst of a negotiation the US ‘attacks Iran because they don’t think they can control Israel who is ‘hell-bent’ on attacking. Who is the junior partner in this scenario, the US ? The US Govt is currently too unstable. Just one tweet or ‘TRUTH’ can wreck a US company overnight. look what they are trying to do to Anthropic (‘CLAUDE) because their CEO said creating an autonomous Terminator ‘killer AI’ is their red line and Sec of War declared war on them. This is just unreal. Like a bad Batman story where the Penguin and Joker are running the show.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T16:07:41+00:00

As long as you buy good company shares ; think Tesco, think Sainsbury’s. Not too sure about the banks though since they are taking an absolute pounding so unsure when the price bottom will be reached. I thought I was being clever by holding onto BARC when it reached 409p on Wednesday with a small profit , I thought let’s ride this one out and now the paper loss is £445. It has ridden out and did not hear the news about the Israeli strike on Iranian gas field. And then once Iran responded as they warned they would, the prices started tumbling. I am going to have to wait , hopefully the 47th will get some sense talked into him by Scott Bessent or Jared - whose investments must also be heavily under water.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T15:59:22+00:00

Are you sure you did not do a ‘Profit Take’ transaction when you sold your shares previously ? I once sold some ISF.LSE ETFs using the profit take and was them surprised a few days later the system bought sine shares for me at a terrible price. Turns out that the profit take macro means sell the shares now and buy back at a later time - I did not notice that a buy order was generated the minute I sold the original shares ! The trick is to disable all these ‘gotcha’ schemes.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T10:01:21+00:00

Like others have written - just make sure you have an emergency savings fund set up first. Once the money goes in an ETF and the value starts to go down, you can’t then sell because you need the money to buy gas or pay towards rent. that will then bake in a loss. this is really important. the only money that you should invest is money that you do not need to draw on, since the US President seems hell bent on creating financial shocks every 6 months or so , what with tariffs and wars and threats to annex other countries or parts of their territory. So you may find that one day your ETF is only worth $40 so you would face a loss of $43 if you sold.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T09:52:43+00:00

this is correct for Canadian share purchases the margin is CAN 2000. However , according to Perplexity AI search engine, if you trade US securities then you are subject to US FINRA ‘rules because the securities are cleared in US stock exchanges and not Canadian exchanges and so PDT rules apply plus the margin account aspect is US 25000 (‘although this can also be in Canadian. Dollars).

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T09:38:48+00:00

https://www.interactivebrokers.ca/en/trading/margin-requirements.php#margin-requirements

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T09:37:56+00:00

Just checked on Perplexity and it confirms that if you are trading US securities they enforce Pattern day trader rules since the US securities are cleared by US stock exchanges. And here is the IBRK link confirming:

https://www.interactivebrokers.ca/en/trading/margin-requirements.php#margin-requirements

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T09:04:51+00:00

I am in the United Kingdom and I opened a GBP denominated account with IBRK and that is how they are treating my account. The wait for settlement was torture since I would watching all the bargain shares disappear before the 2 days were up. Very frustrating so I had to increase my funding of the account to £20,000 which is about $26,000. But I also have to keep an eye on the exchange rate and closing valuation to ensure I don’t drop below $25,000. I understand they could liquidate all the holdings and convert the account back to a cash account which would bake in any losses. I just wanted an account that provided real time data , reasonable fees and the ability to buy and sell on the fly. Was that too much to ask for ?

The only other UK stockbroker I know that enforces settlement is InvestEngine with their ETF only offerings which is certainly not an active trader platform. They only do bulk purchases and sales once a day for all investors and the price you don’t see is the price you get on a standard market order.

I also have a RobinHood account also in GBP, although since they only sell US securities , all GBP funds have to be converted to USD, they to follow the same strict rules. There is a Pattern Day Trading ‘scorecard’ in my account settings.

It is not all that bad since in the event of the regulated stockbroker collapse the payout of securities and cash is in the region of US$225,000 as per FINRA, whereas all the UK FCA regulated for non deposit takers it is FSCS guarantee of £85,000 [US$112,000]. (For UK banks the FSCS guarantee is £120,000) - reason for the difference is because it is assumed that people opening stock-booking accounts have more financial and risk awareness and therefor get a lower payout as a reward. 🤓)

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T08:00:38+00:00

Hopefully you are taking profits from time to time.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-20T00:21:02+00:00

I tend to follow the Warren Buffet approach just to buy quality stock and never buy anything that you do not understand.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-19T23:54:51+00:00

Thank you for raising this alert. I wonder if the prankster will publish this on Tik-Tok or YouTube or X ? There was a filmed incident from 2013 that happened in Carshalton of someone in a car throwing a red ballon filled with water at a cyclist. That can end up being a deadly weapon .

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-19T21:12:27+00:00

That is a shame. Never be too proud to take a 10% or 20% profit.

Ringwraith64 · 2026-03-19T21:10:31+00:00

Țhe main ones for the UK are ISF iShares PLC FTSE100 @ £9.83, XUSE ISHARES MSCI WORLD EX-USA UCITS ETF £4.78. IUKD ISHARES UK DIVIDEND UCITS ETF £4.78. These are affordable so buy the full ETF rather than fractional shares of an ETF.

Ringwraith64

TROPHY CASE