Exactly, and people need to remember that brokers can do whatever they choose as long as it's legal. Some try and discourage investment and especially the flipping of OTC stocks, so they intentionally make it more difficult. Others like E*TRADE, which I use for the vast majority of my investment activity, operate within SEC guidelines but are not overzealous about imposing additional delays and trading restrictions. I have one account associated with a retirement account that still allows for trading of OTC stocks but imposes restrictions such as limiting trades to blocks of 50k shares/order, and also imposes high commissions, obviously to discourage investing and especially the repeated flipping of OTC securities. These types of restrictions are not only applied to 401k or IRA brokerage accounts. A brokerage house can cater more to investors in "blue chip" stocks on the major exchanges if that's what they want to do. I definitely recommend ETrade to anyone investing across all exchanges, but especially if they wish to include OTC exchange traded securities.