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How to move your account without closing the old one
There are two kinds of broker-to-broker transfer, and only one leaves the account you are leaving open. I learned the difference the expensive way, on my own account. This page is so you do not have to.
What happened to me
I asked to move everything, and it closed the account behind me.
I was moving my account from one broker to another. The form asked how much to move, and I chose everything, because «everything» sounded like the clean answer. It was: it moved all of it, and closed the account I was leaving.
I did not want that account closed. I still had a use for it: I was testing a connection to it, and a connection needs an account to live on.
It is not a mistake of judgement or of intelligence. It is a detail almost nobody explains before the click: the complete transfer is also the one that closes the door behind you. The people who move brokers are exactly the people who meet this detail after the fact. So here it is before.
The two choices
Full or partial. They are not two speeds of the same thing.
Full transfer
Everything moves: positions, cash, and usually the account itself is closed when it is empty. This is the one that ends your relationship with the old broker.
Choose it when you are genuinely done with the old broker and want nothing left behind.
Partial transfer
Only what you list moves. What you leave behind stays, and the account you are leaving stays open. You can run a partial transfer more than once.
Choose it when you want to keep the old account: to keep a connection alive, keep a fallback, or simply not burn a bridge today.
In the United States this transfer service is called ACAT (Automated Customer Account Transfer Service), and it is what a broker means when it offers to move your account. Outside the United States the name and the mechanism differ in every country, and sometimes the process is not called a transfer at all. Ask your brokers what it is called where you are, and who starts it.
Before you click
Six questions, and the fourth one is the one I got wrong.
- Do you want the old account open afterwards? If the answer is yes, you want a partial transfer. There is no third option, and no way to undo a full one.
- Do you have something to leave in it? An account with a position or a balance in it is an account that exists. Ask your broker what it requires — a minimum balance, or an idle fee: only they can tell you.
- What does each side charge? Transfer fees exist at both ends. Only the two brokers can tell you, in writing, before you start.
- Is anything on the old account still in use? A connection to the broker, a data entitlement, an application you registered there, a formula you have not opened in months. This is the one that caught me. A closed account takes all of it with it.
- Does everything you hold move? Some positions and products cannot always travel. Send your broker the list and ask them to confirm it line by line.
- What must you leave untouched while it runs? A transfer in flight is not instantaneous. Ask your brokers what they need you to do — or not do — while it moves: only they can tell you.
The practical shape of it
If you are not certain, transfer in two steps: the part you are sure about now, and the rest later. Keeping an account open costs nothing; reopening one costs a new account: new number, new credentials, new authorisations.
Where our program fits
It reads your account. It does not move anything.
OptionStudioEvo connects to your broker and reads what your account holds. It cannot start a transfer or choose one for you, and it is not involved — the transfer belongs to the two brokers.
What it does have to do with it is the consequence: if a broker account closes, the connection that lived on it goes with it. That is why this page exists.
If you are moving to Tradier, the transfer starts on their side, from your Tradier account: their site is tradier.com. Once the account is open, connecting it to the program takes a key and a minute.