The Sun's Financial Diary

Here’s another broker promotion for new IRA account.
Online broker optionsXpress is offering 5 commission free trades for a new IRA or rollover IRA account. Eligible IRA accounts include Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA, and SEP-IRA. If you open an account with optionsXpress before April 15th, 2010, which is the tax deadline, with at least [...]

Though it’s still almost two months away from the 2009 tax deadline, April 15, 2010, brokerage firms and mutual fund companies have already rolled out promotions to lure taxpayers to open IRA accounts with them. Among them, OptionsHouse is offering 100 commission free trades if you open an IRA account, such as Traditional, Roth, SEP, [...]

When I compared broker web-based trading platforms a while ago, I mentioned that most brokers I am using only have web-based trading platforms, except Scottrade, which also offers a standalone, PC-based platform called ScottradeELITE (available for customers with account balance of $25,000 or more). What I like about the separate program is that it’s much, [...]

This is what competition is about.
Early last month, Charles Schwab reduced the commission for online equity trading to $8.95 per trade from the original price of $12.95. The move, as an recent article on Barron’s noted, could trigger a new price war in online trading. Now, there’s a strong evidence that the war may have [...]

ChoiceTrade, headquartered in Central New Jersey, is another online discount broker which offers stock and options trading at a discounted price (ChoiceTrade is one of the discount brokers highlighted in my discount broker comparison post). The current trading commission at ChoiceTrade is $5 per online stock trade with no limit on the size of the [...]

Full service broker Charles Schwab announced today (press release, PDF file) that it is reducing commission for online equity trades. Starting January 19th, Schwab customers will pay a flat $8.95 commission for each online stock trade, regardless the number of shares. The current commission schedule charges $12.95 per stock or ETF (exchange-traded fund) trade [...]

OptionsHouse in an online discount broker which offers investors a wide range of products and services at competitive prices. I first knew the broker in April, then opened an account for myself in June (a $1,000 account minimum is required) and made a couple of trades. The reason I wanted to trade with OptionsHouse was [...]

This is the third segment of the broker trading platform review series. So far I have covered Scottrade and Firstrade. Today, I am going to take a look at another online broker, optionsXpress. I mentioned early that, though I have an account with optionsXpress for nearly 2 years, I didn’t make any trades with optionsXpress [...]

Looks like online brokers are running a lot of promotions these days to attract new customers.
SogoTrade is offering 100 commission free trades for every new customer. It’s quite easy to get the free trades: Open a SogoTrade account; fund the account with $500; receive the bonus. There is a restriction on the free trades though. [...]

When E*Trade launched its global trading platform in 2007, I saw it as an opportunity to finally be able to buy some internationals stocks that are not otherwise available to retail investors in the U.S. At that time, Chinese stocks were as hot as they could be and buying Chinese stocks seemed to be the [...]