Hi all, I have a really basic question about an Interactive Brokers account that I opened. I know how stupid this sounds, but I seem to have my account 100% approved and ready to go, and I have it loaded with 10,000 HKD (the minimum for opening an account), but: I can't buy any stocks. When I try to buy, a pop-up sign says my account isn't authorized to do this.
But maybe the distinction here is between "investing" and "day trading"? Because I'm clicking on the box that says "trade" in the upper right corner, and just trying to do the most basic thing--like, buy one share of Apple. I've looked online and apparently the rules are, I need a minimum of $25,000 USD to engage in day trading. So I'd need to transfer 200,000 more HKD to the IB account. But can't I just invest and buy a few stock shares? Where on their website can I do that?
Apologies in advance for what is probably the dumbest post on GeoExpat this year. I feel like I'm asking, "I just bought some food at the grocery store. How do I eat it?" I seriously can't figure out how to invest money using my online investment company. IB is very difficult to reach--I can't e-mail them, they just have this looping set of "bot" auto-responses and "your question might have been asked before." It's hard to call them because there are super-long wait times because of market volatility. Meanwhile I'm getting a monthly charge and actually losing money during a historic bull market.