It gets worse - I got margin called after one day of trading !

This is so hilarious, I must share what happened to me yesterday for everyone to read.

Yesterday at around 1pm, I received an email from Maybank-Kim Eng telling me that I got a margin call. In that email, I was told that can either pony up $7k or they will sell off $22k of my shares.

I've only traded for a day. With a cash collateral of $10,000, I bought about $22k of REITs and even made $60 on the first day and I received a margin call a day after that ?!?!?

The news almost gave me a heart attack.

At around 3pm yesterday, my broker wrote me back telling me that it was a mistake and nothing needs to be done on my side. Apparently, a colleague was allowed to use the broker's name ( I'm not even sure this is ok from a compliance perspective ! )  to write to me telling me that I got a margin call even though there wasn't one.

You can imagine how disastrous this operational issue is if my broker decided to take a holiday on Monday instead and someone else decided to sell my shares - I might have lost around hundred bucks as the broker sold off my shares. Worse, my margin trading experience would have only last one day and we would never figure out what happens when dividends get declared.

I bet by now, a lot of you might think that I might be better off with another broker but I'll be sticking around at least to document my experience for your benefit. But more importantly I would still hope to achieve 2.88% for my financing costs.

I have no idea what's going to happen on Monday, but I'm tracking every communication with my brokers moving forward just in case I need to say hi to the regulators next week.

Do share a comment or two if you are a Maybank Kim Eng customer.