Can an average investor sue a broker with any degree of confidence?

Closed me out of a winning short position, just as the market turned 5 years ago.

You can not sue a stock broker only submit your claim to arbitration.

I doubt you would have any luck trying to sue, since the market was so unpredictable then. It would be like trying to sue a conveniance store for selling you a loseing lottery ticket.

The first question is, has too much time passed? Check your statute of limitations in your state. Your question may be moot.

No. Most brokers have an arbitration clause in their fine print.

With shorts he could use the cover clause, basically saying he didn't think you could cover the buy. Also the person the shares were borrowed from wanted the shares back so he could sell them. Remember you don't own shorted stock, you borrowed stock to sell.


There are things you can sue for, including forgery (especially on forged margins you didn't want) , forbidding you to claim your money, ignoring input on your shares (for instance you want to buy $10,000 of XXX on the next Monday and he buys YYY or does nothing), excessive churning (especially on forged margin so he could collect even more money), using your account to launder money or trying to make a sales pitch to somebody in a state where he has no license.

There was a massive amounts of cases back in 2000-2003 in Australia where people won against so called reputable brokers for most of the things I mentioned above.