You are seeing a negative cash balance on your Gotrade portfolio page because you have spent more than the available buying power from your account.

There are several possible reasons that may cause a negative cash balance to occur:

If you are using market order in shares order type and you are utilising the entirety of your cash balance, split-second upward price movement when your order is sent for execution might cause the order value to exceeds your buying power.

For example: Your cash balance is at $100. You submitted market order in shares to buy 10 shares of MU (Manchester United) @$10/shares. During the milliseconds it takes to execute your order, the market price moves to $11/share. At $11/share, you will need $110 to buy 10 shares of MU instead of $100, but your available cash is only $100. The order will still execute and cause your equity to increase to $110 and your cash balance will be -$10.

If you are charged a fee (refer to our fee schedule) and you do not have enough cash in your account, the fee will still be deducted from your cash balance, causing the cash value to go negative.

You can deposit additional funds to your Gotrade account or sell of some of your equities to cover the negative cash balance.

If no action is taken on your part by the due date (the third business day after the accounts cash balance has gone negative) our clearing firm Alpaca will be liquidating positions in your account to satisfy the negative cash balance.