Not looking for investing advice, just trying to understand how to navigate Schwab website to invest properly.

    I am using some small increments of my Roth IRA to invest in some ETFs for learning purposes. Last week I bought some shares in a few gold-related ETFs and had clicked the setting "reinvest dividends" because I had assumed it was like the funds in my TDF account and that nothing bad could come from clicking it.

    The totals (cost basis) were $1000, $500, and $500.

    Fast forward to today, I was checking my account and noticed some of my cash reserves were automatically used to buy more shares in the ETFS I bought last week.

    The totals (cost basis) are now $1600, $800, $825.

    So Schwab had apparently auto-pulled $600, $300, and $325 from my cash and bought more ETF with it.

    Is this because I clicked on "reinvest dividends" or is there something else I'm missing? It's just such a large and arbitrary number that it doesn't make sense to me how it could be related to selecting that option.

    Can someone explain this transaction history in Schwab?
    byu/Same-Direction-5765 ininvesting



    Posted by Same-Direction-5765

    2 Comments

    1. If you have a self-directed brokerage account, a broker does not auto-pull cash to buy securities.

      Without more details (what positions and tranactions) it’s really not possible to guess what occured.

      If you have re-invest divs enabled – was there a div payment and subsequent purchase? That’s what you would see.

      Since Schwab has pretty much 24×7 customer service who can explain what happened – you may want to just call and ask them to explain how to interpret the transactions.

    Leave A Reply
    Share via
    Share via