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TradeStation

Annual Securities Disclosures

TradeStation Securities, Inc. and TradeStation Forex, a division of IBFX, Inc. (“TradeStation”) is required to provide you with the following disclosures.

SECURITIES INVESTOR PROTECTION CORPORATION

TradeStation is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”). You may obtain information about SIPC, including the SIPC Brochure, by contacting SIPC at (202) 372-8300 or www.sipc.org.

ROUTING CUSTOMER ORDERS (SEC RULE 606)

Upon your request, TradeStation will provide you with the identity of the market center(s) to which each of your orders in Covered Securities have been routed for execution during the six months prior to your request; advise you as to whether such orders were directed or non-directed; and provide you with the execution times, if any, that resulted from such orders.

In addition, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules require all brokerage firms to make publicly available quarterly reports describing their order routing practices. TradeStation’s quarterly order routing reports are available using the “SEC Rule 606 Report” link on our website at www.TradeStation.com

FINRA PUBLIC DISCLOSURE PROGRAM (FINRA RULE 2267)

FINRA’s BrokerCheck Hotline provides certain information regarding the disciplinary history of FINRA members and their associated persons in response to written inquiries, electronic inquiries, or telephonic inquiries via FINRA’s (1) toll-free telephone listing (1-800-289-9999), or (2) website (www.finra.org). Additionally, FINRA has prepared an investor brochure that includes information describing BrokerCheck.

NFA BACKGROUND AFFILIATION STATUS INFORMATION CENTER (“BASIC”)

TradeStation is required to inform its customers of the National Futures Association ("NFA") Background Affiliation Status Information Center ("BASIC"). The BASIC system compiles various information regarding registrants and anyone can access this system on the Internet. The NFA BASIC system may be accessed at www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/. To locate information on a registrant, simply enter the registrant's NFA ID number or name when prompted. For questions regarding this system, you may contact the NFA information center at 1-800-621-3570 between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST.

MARGIN DISCLOSURE DOCUMENT

Pursuant to FINRA Rule 2264, TradeStation Securities, Inc. (“TradeStation”) is furnishing this document to you to provide some basic facts about purchasing securities on margin, and to alert you to the risks involved with trading securities in a margin account. Before trading stocks in a margin account, you should carefully review the margin agreement provided by TradeStation. Consult your TradeStation account representative regarding any questions or concerns you may have with your margin accounts.

When you purchase securities, you may pay for the securities in full or you may borrow part of the purchase price from your brokerage firm. If you choose to borrow funds from your firm, you will open a margin account with the firm. The securities purchased are the firm's collateral for the loan to you. If the securities in your account decline in value, so does the value of the collateral supporting your loan, and, as a result, the firm can take action, such as issue a margin call and/or sell securities in any of your accounts held with the member, in order to maintain the required equity in the account.

It is important that you fully understand the risks involved in trading securities on margin. These risks include the following:

  • You can lose more funds than you deposit in the margin account. A decline in the value of securities that are purchased on margin may require you to provide additional funds to the firm that has made the loan to avoid the forced sale of those securities or other securities in your account(s).
  • The firm can force the sale of securities in your account(s). If the equity in your account falls below the maintenance margin requirements under the law, or the firm's higher "house" requirements, the firm can sell the securities in any of your accounts held at the firm to cover the margin deficiency. You also will be responsible for any short fall in the account after such a sale.
  • The firm can sell your securities without contacting you. Some investors mistakenly believe that a firm must contact them for a margin call to be valid, and that the firm cannot liquidate securities in their accounts to meet the call unless the firm has contacted them first. This is not the case. Most firms will attempt to notify their customers of margin calls, but they are not required to do so. However, even if a firm has contacted a customer and provided a specific date by which the customer can meet a margin call, the firm can still take necessary steps to protect its financial interests, including immediately selling the securities without notice to the customer.
  • You are not entitled to choose which securities in your account(s) are liquidated or sold to meet a margin call. Because the securities are collateral for the margin loan, the firm has the right to decide which security to sell in order to protect its interests.
  • The firm can increase its "house" maintenance margin requirements at any time and is not required to provide you advance written notice. These changes in firm policy often take effect immediately and may result in the issuance of a maintenance margin call. Your failure to satisfy the call may cause the member to liquidate or sell securities in your account(s).
  • You are not entitled to an extension of time on a margin call. While an extension of time to meet margin requirements may be available to customers under certain conditions, a customer does not have a right to the extension.

NOTICE OF TRADESTATION SECURITIES’ PRIVACY POLICY

Our Commitment to Your Privacy: TradeStation Group Inc. and its subsidiary companies, TradeStation Securities, Inc., TradeStation Technologies, Inc., and TradeStation Europe, Ltd. (collectively referred to herein as “TradeStation”, “our”, “us” or “we”) are committed to protecting the confidentiality and security of information we collect about consumers and our customers. We will not share nonpublic information about you ("Information") with third parties outside of our securities affiliate’s clearing firm(s) without your consent, except for the specific purposes described below. This notice describes the Information we may gather and the circumstances under which we may share it. Our securities affiliate’s clearing firm(s) should have an additional separate privacy policy, which explains their privacy practices.

Why We Collect and How We Use Information: We limit the collection and use of Information to the minimum we require to deliver and improve service to you. Such service includes processing transactions requested by you, providing you with trading software analysis tools (and related educational, training and support), and administering our business.

How We Gather Information: We get most Information directly from you, when you apply for, access and use financial (and related) products and services offered by TradeStation through its affiliated companies and its business partners—whether in person, by telephone or electronically. We may verify this information or get additional information from consumer or investigative reporting agencies or public sources. This Information may relate to your finances, employment, avocations or other personal characteristics, as well as transactions and interactions between or among our affiliated companies or others. The personal information we collect may include your name, address, telephone number, email address, Social Security number and date of birth, as well as details about your professional affiliations, net worth, income, investments and investment experience. In addition, Web tools are used on our Web site to help us monitor traffic patterns and to see how the user navigates through our site. These Web tools are used by us and our affiliates for internal purposes only and are not used to collect or disseminate personal information to any third party.

How We Protect Information: We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that are designed to comply with industry rules and regulations to guard your Information. Our employees are required to protect the confidentiality of Information and to comply with our established policies. They may access Information only when there is an appropriate reason to do so, such as to administer our products or services. We also maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect Information which comply with all applicable laws. Employees who violate our Privacy Policy are subject to disciplinary process. TradeStation offers a secure server with password-protection. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is used to increase the protection of your information. SSL encodes and decodes the transmission of personal information to help prevent interception by another party. We also use firewalls and other security technology to help protect our network and systems from external attack. In addition to our efforts to protect Information, you can also help to protect your identity. When using the Internet: keep your security software current and turned on; protect your password information; shred personal documents; and check your credit report regularly. Remember that TradeStation will never request by email or similar electronic means your account number, login password or Social Security Number, so if you ever receive such a request via the Internet, it is not from us and you should not provide any information. If you have reason to believe that you have been the victim of identity theft, immediately call our Client Service Department at (800) 822-0512 or (954) 652-7900.

Disclosure of Information: We do not disclose any nonpublic information about our customers or former customers to anyone, except as required or permitted by law. We may disclose any Information to or as directed by our securities affiliate’s clearing firm(s) or when we believe it necessary for the conduct of our business, or where disclosure is required or permitted by law. Information may be disclosed for audit or research purposes, to attorneys or other professionals, or to law enforcement and regulatory agencies, for example, to help us prevent fraud. In addition, we may disclose Information to affiliated and non-affiliated third party service providers (i) to enable them to provide business services for us or our securities affiliate’s clearing firm(s), such as performing computer related or data maintenance or processing services, (ii) to facilitate the processing of transactions requested by you, (iii) to assist us in offering products and services to you or to assist our clearing firm in offering products and services to you, or (iv) for credit or other background review and reporting purposes. Except in those specific, limited situations, without your consent we will not make any disclosures of Information to other companies who may want to sell their products or services to you. For example, we do not sell customer lists and we will not sell your name to a catalogue company. It is TradeStation's policy to require all third parties that are to receive any Information, other than our securities affiliate’s clearing firm(s), to sign strict confidentiality agreements.

Opt-Out Information:

Non Affiliates: Current law allows you to limit the sharing of Information with nonaffiliated third parties under certain circumstances. Since we do not currently share your Information with nonaffiliated third parties, other than as described in this policy, there is no need for you to opt-out.

Affiliates: Current law allows you to limit the sharing of certain Information among our affiliates, including creditworthiness information and, under some circumstances, Information for marketing products and services to you. We currently do not share creditworthiness information with our affiliates so it is not necessary for you to opt out in that regard. Sometimes we do share your Information between and among our affiliates for marketing offers which relate to products and services we believe could enhance or improve your experience as our customer. You may ask us not to share your Information, for marketing purposes, with any TradeStation affiliate with whom you do not do business by following the opt-out procedure below.
To opt out, contact our Client Service Department at (800) 822-0512 or (954) 652-7900.

Your election to limit marketing offers from our affiliates will apply unless and until you request that we change your choice.

State Considerations: The practices described above are in accordance with federal law. You may have other protections under applicable state laws, such as those in Vermont and Nevada. To the extent these state laws apply, we will comply with them if we share your Information. For example, Vermont law places additional limits on sharing Information about Vermont residents so we will not share Information we collect about Vermont residents to companies outside of TradeStation, except:

  • To companies that perform marketing or other services on our behalf;
  • Contact information (like name and address), and transaction information (such as your payment history) to other financial institutions with which we have joint marketing agreements;
  • With the authorization or consent of the Vermont resident; or
  • As permitted or required by law.

Nevada Law. At any time, you may request to be placed on TradeStation’s internal do not call list. Nevada law also requires that we provide you with the following contact information:

TradeStation
8050 SW 10th Street, Ste 2000
Plantation, Florida 33324

Bureau of Consumer Protection
Office of the Nevada Attorney General
555 E. Washington Street, Suite 3900
Las Vegas, Nevada 89101

Consumers and Former Customers: Even if you never became, or are no longer, a customer, our Privacy Policy will continue to apply to you.

To Whom This Policy Applies: This Privacy Policy applies to products or services provided by TradeStation to its customers.

Access to and Correction of Information: If you desire to review any file we may maintain for your personal Information, please contact us. If you notify us that any Information is incorrect, we will review it. If we agree, we will correct our records. If we do not agree, you may submit a short statement of dispute, which we will include in future disclosures of the disputed Information. Information collected in connection with, or in anticipation of, any claim or legal proceeding will not be made available.

Further Information: We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy. The examples contained within this Privacy Policy are illustrations and they are not intended to be exclusive. This notice complies with federal law and SEC and industry self-regulatory rules and regulations regarding privacy. You may have additional rights under other foreign or domestic laws that may apply to you.

Sincerely,
The TradeStation Team