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Fidelity & “Illiquid Securiies”

edited August 15 in Other Investing
Message that popped up when trying to buy FMY

”Fidelity does not accept orders for illiquid securities. Please enter a limit price”.

FMY is a CEF that plays in the mortgage market. I tried to buy some additional shares today after previously having assigned it to a “basket.” I eventually put the buy through, but needed to set a “limit” price. Normally that’s not much of an issue. But having to do so defeats the purpose of using (and paying for) a Fidelity “basket”, since you’re supposed to be able to buy / sell / rebalance the entire basket with 1-touch. Hopefully, this is a temporary issue that may not affect future basket rebalancing.

- How common is this “illiquid” designation?

- Does it adversely reflect on the manager / product?

- Is is based just on very recent trading, rather than a longer period?

- Or (as I from some limited reading) is it simply a warning that the security is thinly traded?

At just 1.5% of total portfolio (inside a basket of 10) , I can’t see where thin trading would make much difference. Thanks for any thoughts.

Comments

  • IMO, Fido warning was good for a CEF that trades only about 5,000 shares/day and bid-ask spread is 9c (not that bad). Fido probably has a trigger based on low trading volume.

    I haven't run into such situations a lot but I think Schwab did the same few years ago when I wanted to buy a tiny Canada-based CEF.

  • if there are criteria, vanguard brk does not disclose.
    either trade will be denied or user directed to call vanguard.
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