The Sun's Financial Diary

When something seems too good to be true, it probably either is or won’t last long in case it is true. And what happened to Zecco Trading in the past few years just serves as a perfect example. Zecco, an online discount broker whose name stands for ZEro Commission COst, started in 2006 by offering its customer [...]

Online discount broker OptionsHouse is offering free 1-year subscription to Barrons.com when you open a brokerage account with the firm. This promotion is similar to the 1-year free WSJ.com subscription that OptionsHouse offered last year. Basically, you open an OptionsHouse account, make an initial deposit of $1,000 ore more, then receive a complimentary 1-year subscription [...]

What I like about TradeKing is not only that they have a nice web interface, excellent customer service and cash bonus promotions (the latest one just ended on January 31st), but also that they constantly roll out new products and services to improve user experience, whether it’s trading or education, with the popular discount broker. [...]

It didn’t happen very often that a discount broker raised its trade commission because that is against the trend we saw in the broker industry in recent years. In 2010 alone, big name brokers such as Vanguard, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab have all cut their commissions and begun to offer commission-free ETFs, though the number [...]

Online discount broker E*Trade Securities is currently running a new promotion that will give every new customer a $500 Apple gift card. To qualify for the big gift card plus another 60 days of commission free trading, however, you will need to open an account with at least $150,000, which I believe is too high [...]

Online discount broker ChoiceTrade recently announced a new program called Zero-Commission Options for options traders. Starting October 2010, you will be able to trade equity and ETF options for zero commission during options expiration week. Expiration week is the week ending with expiration Friday, which is the week before the third Saturday of each month. Here [...]

Scottrade and Zecco are two of my main stock brokers. I have used both of them quite often, especially Scottrade. In the past, I have written lengthy reviews of both of them (Scottrade review and Zecco review) from my own experience, including features of the broker, fees, research tools, and account opening process, etc. While [...]

Online discount broker OptionsHouse is now offering a free one-year subscription to The Wall Street Journal Online when you open a new OptionsHouse brokerage account. To get the free WSJ, you need to open an account before October 31, 2010 and fund it with at least $1,000 ($2,000 for margin account), and use promotion code [...]