What calling a broker actually is like

I tried selling a stock in my brokerage account the other day. It wouldn’t let me, so I called customer service to speak to a broker. Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: “Hi, I’m trying to sell a stock but it won’t let me. Can you help me understand why?”

Him: “I’m not sure. Let me do some research.”

(This is how I answered SO many questions when I worked as a broker. I didn’t know so I had to either Google it or call a coworker)

Him: “It looks like this stock has been restricted because of the Russia-Ukraine war. You won’t be able to sell it until May 11.”

Me: “Ok, I had no idea it had anything to do with that. Thank you.”

The lessons in this conversation:

1. You don’t need to be a fancy day trader to just call and ask for help. I didn’t even know what question to ask, so I just asked to understand better what was going on.

2. The finance people on the phone that you think are intimidating are also just figuring things out and asking for help, too.

3. Thank GOD I didn’t put all my money in that stock. It was a stock I randomly played around with a few years ago and made money day trading, but over the long term, it’s down by about $4k because it went BANKRUPT. That’s the risk in in having all your money in one company. The risk is also that a conflict could happen and you could just not be able to touch it. I learned this lesson so you don’t have to.

4. This is why diversifying is so important and now I do what I’ve always told my clients to do and invest in the same low cost investments that spread their risk across lots of different companies. This year those investments will pay off more than just $1k in dividends alone. Time in the market is better than timing the market.

Ready to learn about how to invest at the six figure level? Join my brokerage account masterclass on 4/27. Sign up for it here and see you there!