Stupid mistakes I've made:

Regarding brokers in general, I've made a couple of stupid mistakes recently. First, I use and am a big fan of the StocksToTrade platform.  I recently set up my broker integration and decided to open an account with their preferred broker, Tradier. The process for setting up a new account was straightforward & very easy.  (Their terms are awesome too by the way.)  My problem came when I set up how to fund the account.  I chose the ACH process with my international bank. The problem was I chose to set up my business account.  I did the same thing with another international broker I use, Capital Markets Elite.

This is a big no-no!  In order to fund a brokerage account, you must use a personal account in which you are the sole signer on. This is a money laundering control plus it prevents people from stealing money that doesn't belong to them. It doesn't matter if you own the business and you're the sole signatory on the account.  Fortunately for me, Tradier caught it during the account set up process and I corrected it.  With CME, I had already funded the account and since CME didn't know where that initial deposit came from, it was lost momentarily. In other words, CME had a significant deposit from me that I was unable to access for trading.  We are in the process of making things right and I have no doubt it will be corrected soon, but I still lost access to my money for over 2 weeks.  AND it was my fault.