The Sun’s Financial Diary

trade MONSTER is another online discount broker that generates quite some interests recently.
I first noticed trade MONSTER when I compiled the list of discount brokers with the lowest commissions for online stock trading. Actually, if you look at the list, trade MONSTER isn’t really attractive from the point of view of costs. The broker charges [...]

I opened an OptionsHouse brokerage account a few weeks ago after noticing that it has lowered its online stock trade commission to $2.95/trade. That price beats what I currently get from other popular discount brokers, such as TradeKing, Firstrade, and even Zecco. However, since OptionsHouse requires some paperwork (such as a signed form and voided [...]

I opened a brokerage account with optionsXpress back in 2007 when they ran a promotion that gave $100 bonus for a new account. Since then I have been running an optionsXpress referral program for people who want to receive some incentives to open an account with the broker (you can get $100 bonus, which is [...]

OptionsHouse first came to my attention in April when I compared online discount brokers for their commissions to trade stocks, mutual funds, and options. However, at that time I didn’t get much interest in the broker at that time because back then, the commission it charges was $4.95 per stock trade, which is the same [...]

Despite all the troubles at the financial service company, E*Trade Financial scored a big win in the latest SmartMoney Broker Survey, leading four out of five categories. Though I don’t use E*Trade as my stock broker, nor do I have a savings account with them, I do have a E*Trade Global Trading Account to [...]

The best online discount brokers don’t necessarily offer the best value for investors. Before selecting an online brokerage, it’s better to know how much it will cost you to invest with it, even though cost isn’t the only concern.
When I look for a discount broker, one of the most important pieces of information I always [...]

I am sure you have called your broker on occasions when you had a problem with your account. Usually, how long did it take for your broker to answer your phone call?  Were you be able to talk to a broker when you needed immediate assistance with your trades?
I have a few brokerage accounts and [...]

I haven’t used Zecco for a long time, especially after they introduced the new pricing structure , which requires $25,000 account minimum or 25 trades every month in order to get 10 commission free trades per month, early this year. All my recent trades were done with Scottrade, using free trades I neared from the [...]

Firstrade, one of the popular discount online brokers, is offering incentives to people who join and participate in their newly launched online community, The Investor Network.

Details of incentives being offered are as the following:
Firstrade is very pleased to announce the launch of a promotion on The Investor Network. We’ll be giving an Apple iPod Nano [...]

Did you trade stocks or ETF/mutual funds in 2008? If you did, do you find it’s sometimes confusing about your investment cost basis,  taxes on capital gains, or capital losses carry-over? It wasn’t easy for me at tax time a few years ago when I first started to trade stocks while using pen & paper [...]