Third-Party Trading Authority

A third-party trading authority is a written permission letting someone other than the account holder place orders on an account. It is the formal version of an arrangement people often make informally, and the difference between the two is the whole point: the authorised person is recorded by the firm, verified, and given defined powers, rather than simply knowing the login. What the document controls is scope. Most firms distinguish authority to trade from authority to move money, and the second is granted rarely and separately, because a permission to withdraw to an instrument in another name is a different risk entirely. Three things are worth knowing. Sharing credentials instead is a breach of most client agreements and puts any dispute on the client's side of the argument, because the platform records show the account holder acting. The authority is revocable, but only in the form the agreement requires and from the moment the firm processes it, not from the moment the client decides. And it does not transfer responsibility: trades placed under it are the account holder's trades, with the account holder's money and the account holder's liability.