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Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. Yes, we've always had a HELOC. I don't think the terms are as good as a refi though. I keep forgetting that our economy is upside down from what my parents lived in. Back in 1968 when my parents bought a house the inflation rate was about 4% and their...

I'm not a full-time trader, if that's what you're asking. I've been piker-trading for like 15 years but got serious about it like 3 years ago. Yes, I'm trading profitably.

In a way I'm feeling overleveraged anyway. We refinanced a few years ago to acquire a rental property. I'm looking forward to raking in that stream of passive income with that debt retired.

Yeah, I've been intentionally omitting actual personal numbers. The renovations are maybe half of our cash reserves. I agree cash reserves are important but we're certainly not going all-in with the renos.

That's fine on paper but what happens if I die or have a stroke or some other health event? I can trade but not my wife. I'd hate to have her or some ham-handed stranger try to unwind any open positions in my absence.

So here I am in my late 50's and Mrs. Gee and I are within spitting distance of having our mortgage paid off. It's something every middle-aged, middle-class person looks forward to, right? Also, we're currently doing some home renovations. Instead of borrowing money to fund the renovations...

Who cares? Don't play against computers. Play against other people, like in person.

Frankly I view them as held in a "cloud". But I do get investor material in the US mail sometimes from stocks/ETFs I've owned.

You didn't mention owning stocks or ETFs but it sounds like bonds aren't the way to go. Maybe owning a bond ETF like SHY (like I mentioned above) is the way to go. You actually own that with your name on it.

I've written some trading systems in C++ that can run on both IB and Oanda. It took some work but I created a generic trading adapter class that is implemented as derived classes, one for IB, one for Oanda. The trading systems see a single interface but can trade on either platform under the...

I used briefing.com "In Play" service back when I was trading stocks. It's a paid service but has more information than the free sources. You can watered-down versions of the In Play service through various brokers such as Schwab.

I'm just an old programmer but the answers are obvious. Maybe you should study harder.

I usually stash my cash in SHY (a Treasury ETF). Very liquid, very low volatility.

The famous teen pump-and-dumper Jonathan Lebed used Yahoo message boards exclusively back in the late 90s. Every morning before school he'd create a bunch of new Yahoo IDs (he kept getting banned) and pump the penny stock he had chosen. Knowing such people lurked there ought to tell you something.

Why focus on Apple phones? Samsung phones are already in the $500 range. It was a real eye-opener about how much phones really cost when Verizon went off the subsidized "new every 2" plan. I'm a cheap SOB so they'll be prying my Samsung Galaxy S4 from my cold, dead fingers in 10 years. :D...

"LOL! Donald Trump will never be elected President!"

Fixed that for ya.

Welcome to the new protectionist economy!

I doubt this will affect the average MetaTrader or home programmer rolling their own systems. It's probably aimed at those that publish their systems for profit on places like collective2

Looks like there's only a cancel/modify fee for API/CTCI Directed stock orders: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=14718 I cancel/modify option orders on IB all day long with no hit.