Overview

A negative cash balance in your managed investing, self-directed investing, or crypto account can happen when a banking institution rejects a deposit and pulls back the funds. For self-directed investing accounts, it can also happen if your order is filled at a different price than expected.

It can take up to seven business days for a bank to notify Wealthsimple about a rejected deposit. In the meantime, you may have invested funds in your account before the full settlement period concluded.

You have until the end of the day (11:59 PM EST) on the same day that we email you about the rejected deposit to resolve the negative cash balance. If you still have a negative cash balance the following morning, we may need to liquidate your holdings to cover the amount owing.

Resolve a negative cash balance

You have a few options to resolve a negative balance in an investing account:

1. Sell enough investments to cover the owed cash balance.
2. Resolve the issue with your bank and resubmit the deposit.
3. Submit a new deposit from the same or a different bank account.
4. Transfer funds from a different Wealthsimple account.

Liquidating your holdings

If we need to liquidate some of your shares to cover the negative cash balance in your account, we’ll start with the most recent whole shares you’ve purchased and will sell them at the current market price.

We’ll sell enough shares to cover the full cash balance that you owe, including fractional shares. Any extra cash left over from the sale will get added to the cash balance in your account.

If the value of your holdings at the time of sale is less than the amount needed to cover the negative balance, you'll need to make an additional deposit to cover the remaining negative balance.

Troubleshoot a rejected deposit

To understand why your deposit was rejected, check out the troubleshoot a rejected deposit article.

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