Why do I need more cash than number of shares * limit price to buy the shares? (trades are free of commission and there are no pending orders)

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Franck Dernoncourt Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/163595 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I was trying to buy 141 shares of SGOV with a price limit of 100.38 USD via Interactive Brokers, but I got the error message ( full screen ): "BUY 141 SGOV ARCA @ 100.38" Available settled cash converted to base: 14210.04 USD Cash needed for this order and other pending orders: 14288.78 USD Where does that 14288.78 USD come from? I though I only needed number of shares * limit price, which in this case is 141*100.38=14153.58 USD . Notes: I don't have any pending orders. One minute after the error message, I bought 140 shares of SGOV then 1 share of SGOV without any issue (both where limit buy orders with a price limit of 100.38 USD). The trade is free of commission.

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: therealchriswoodward Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/163607 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. If this was today (the day you posted in case you don’t find this right away), there were serious problems with brokerages today. It was likely just an error if you didn’t have any other trades that hadn’t fully closed out. Sometimes you have to wait up to three days for a trade to be completely finished and your capital freed back up.