Covestor not transparent, not very open about their process.
I opened an MMA account with covestor with the minimum amount as advertised on their website. Took a long time to get money in the trading account (2 weeks). But, I was able to select a manager and thought I was all set. Boy, was I wrong! Checked it every day for a week, and it was going up and down a bit, but then it wasn't going anywhere and a couple of days later when I called I was told my account was placed in an inactive status because it dropped below the minimum, and all I had to do was deposit more money and the account would start trafding again. OK, fair enough. Took another couple of weeks to get the money to show up in my account, and then nothing. I called and they said they would reactivate my account and I should be all set. Sure enough, the account started trading again, but I noticed instead of going up and down by a few hundred dollars my account was down more than a thousand dollars! Seems I had missed a few trades while my account was inactive! There was no prior mention of this possibility at all. Eventually, I sent in a little more money and diversified my account with a few different managers, even tried the Tim Sykes model but that did absolutely nothing except cost money due to the fee and also lost money because of the slight delay in trade executions. Needless to say, that experience was short-lived. My account slowly began to recoup my losses (over $1200.00!) due to Covestor deactivating my account, and eventually started to make some gains. I relaxed and didn't check the site for a week or so and was dumbfounded when I checked my account found it to be deactivated yet again! I called and was told that one or more of my models had engaged in day trading and I didn't have the minimum invested for a day trading account so it was deactivated. Again, I was told that I needed to deposit more money and my account would be reactivated. At this time I had a little over $10,000.00 invested, so I sent more money. IB had set me up with a token authentication and I was able to transfer money via ACH and this only took a week. Again, I called and requested reactivation, but I was told then that the minimum for a day trading account was $30,000.00! WTF?! OK, I borrowed some money and sent another deposit to bring it up to $30,000.00, and called another week later when the ACH deposit had 'cleared' and again asked to have my account reactivated. I also asked if my account would be deactivated if the value dropped below this new minimum. I was told "no", so I thought I was all set. Checked the account the next day and there was no change in value, so I called to make sure it was reactivated. I was assured it was and would see some activity the next day. Checked next day and sure enough there was some 'activity', my account had again lost but now it was over $2,000.00 due to missing some trades in my models. The next day I saw some gains, and watched it every day from then on until I closed the account. The bottom line: I made some money eventually, but the loss of over $3,000.00 was a tough pill to swallow. They should have explained more about these "Gotchas!" before I invested.
This review is the subjective opinion of an Investimonials member and not of Investimonials LLC
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