Comments on: Discount Brokerage Firms: A Review of Scottrade, Firstrade, ShareBuilder, and QQQDirect

By: Gerry

Gerry — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:54:44 +0000

Have you heard of SogoTrade? $1.50 per trade.
www.sogotrade.com
The other sibling is SogoElite.
http://elite.sogoinvest.com

By: Scottrade Launched Improved Mutual Fund Center | The Sun’s Financial Diary | A Personal Finance Blog on Saving and Investing

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:53:53 +0000

[…] I have been a loyal customer for Scottrade for more than 5 years. Though I have opened a number of brokerage accounts during that time period, Scottrade remains my primary broker holding most of our investable assets. There are reasons for me to stick with Scottrade. […]

By: Switching from Firstrade to Tradeking | The Sun’s Financial Diary | A Personal Finance Blog on Saving and Investing

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:02:06 +0000

[…] Scottrade: Primary stock broker, $7 per trade; […]

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 19:20:32 +0000

Whatever you do, don’t go with Firstrade. They lured tons of people in with no transaction fee no-load fund trades. Then they dropped that feature and now charge people $50 per account to transfer out. Classic bait and switch.

By: Get Up to $100 When Switching to Scottrade | The Sun’s Financial Diary | A Personal Finance Blog on Saving and Investing

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:51:02 +0000

[…] for stocks listed in Hong Kong, and QQQDirect to buy QQQQ without commission (find out more in my brokerage firm review). Though essentially I can get all I want from Zecco which offers both commission free trading and […]

By: sheila

sheila — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:20:52 +0000

I have been using ShareBuilder for about 6 months, at the basic plan which charges only $4 per trade. I do not “batch” my orders but rotate it each month, buying stock in only one or two companies. As soon as the trade is made, I switch my automatic investing plan to the next two stocks on my list. This way I can have a portfolio of 12 stocks I like, making a purchase of each stock every six months. This is long-term investment (for retirement), and so I will not be selling the stocks any time soon. The ShareBuilder account is great for stocks held directly, but I am looking to invest more money elsewhere.

By: james jenkins

james jenkins — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:48:35 +0000

does anyone have personal experience with optionsXpress?

Jim

By: ShareBuilder Getting Flexible? | The Sun’s Financial Diary | A Personal Finance Blog on Saving and Investing

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 14:00:45 +0000

[…] One of the problemsI have with ShareBuilder, also one of the reasons I decided to leave ShareBuilder, is its lack of flexibility when it comes to choosing when to invest and how to invest. For instance, at the time when I joined the program, I could only select to invest on the first Tuesday of the month from my basic plan (one that without subscription fee) and the longest interval between two consecutive investments is one month. […]

By: Sun

Sun — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:50:03 +0000

Zeronimo: I called Zecco last month about their promotion ($1000 to open an account) and was told, at that time, it will end on April 30. I am not sure if that promotion is still available. I also got an email from Zecco today that they have removed all the paperwork when opening an account. That’s definitely a good news. I haven’t made up my mind whether to get an account or not. The free trading is a big plus, but I wonder they can keep offering that or not. Do you have a Zecco account? If you do, do you like it?

By: zeronimo

zeronimo — Mon, 14 May 2007 15:01:01 +0000

Zecco is a new brokerage company. You get free trades of 10/day with a maximum of 40/month. Although they require you $2500 to open an account but since there is no maintenance requirements you can take them out if you wanted. They had “secret” promo that you can open for only $1000. I don’t know when that expires.

Prior to May 10, 2007 they require you to submit paperwork by email/fax or regular mail. So first time registrants had experienced rough times because they got really backup processing applications.

By: Sun

Sun — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:55:39 +0000

Steven: QQQDirect is a division of MyStockFund, which is also a discount broker. The main difference between QQQDirect and Sharebuilder is that with QQQDirect you can buy QQQQ without paying commission. But that’s only for QQQQ. If you want to buy other stocks, then you will have to pay commissions. I have another post that compares MyStockFund and Sharebuilder that you can find at here.

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:25:11 +0000

How does QQQDirect compare to Sharebuilder?

By: The Sun

The Sun — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 13:49:09 +0000

Garner: I have used Sharebuilder for about a year now and didn’t have many problems with them. I guess the reason was I only have a very simple relationship with them and don’t really have to deal with them except making a purchase every month.

I have heard about FolioFN but never really considered it? Just curious, what’s the reason for you to choose FolioFN? A quick look shows they have a monthly fee. It only makes sense if you do a lot of trading every month to save on commissions you will otherwise pay for other brokers. But if this is the case, did you consider Zecco or Sogo? Zecco doesn’t charge monthly fee or commission and Sogo has a maximum commission of $3 for both scheduled and real-time trading.

By: Garner Weng

Garner Weng — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:13:38 +0000

I have used Sharebuilder for about 2-3 years — and their uncaring and slow customer service is driving me to look to move, perhaps to FolioFN. I had a problem with my account (which incidentally made no sense — involving Sharebuilder allowing me access to one of my accounts but refusing access to the second of my accounts, saying that my identity was not verified!) — and it took nearly 8 hours to get a call back from a supervisor. And she took the attitude quite expressly that she did not care if the company kept my business or not. If everything worked flawlessly, perhaps I could deal with the attitude. But it doesn’t. Aside from the account access issue, I have had a few occasions in which I have had to request fixes, e.g., recently I could not open the tax document from Sharebuilder to do my taxes and had to request a fix.

By: The Sun

The Sun — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 02:31:39 +0000

Brokerage: Part of the post was crippled, but now it is restored.

By: Brokerage

Brokerage — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:04:42 +0000

Brokerage…

Some portions of this article sounds interesting. May be you have some links where I could read more about this topic?…

By: My Best - The Sun’s Financial Diary - Accumulating wealth is like building The Great Wall, one brick at a time

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:00:25 +0000

[…] Discount Brokerage Firms: A Review of Scottrade, Firstrade, ShareBuilder, and QQQDirect […]

By: Model Portfolios Built with ETFs (I) — Couch Potato Portfolio - The Sun’s Financial Diary - Accumulating wealth is like building The Great Wall, one brick at a time

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:33:21 +0000

[…] Discount Brokerage Firms: A Review of Scottrade, Firstrade, ShareBuilder, and QQQDirect […]

By: The Sun

The Sun — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 06:06:18 +0000

investing101: If your main investments are in mutual funds, why would you want to go with a brokerage instead of the fund company? Though FT offers some no-fee no-load mutual funds, you can be sure you won’t pay any extra fees with the fund company (Vanguard does have an annual fee of $10 if the fund assets you have is less than $5000). And it may be a misunderstanding that there’s no minimum to invest with FT. That’s true if you invest in stocks or EFTs, but may not be so with mutual fund as most mutual funds do have a minimum investment requirement. However, some brokerage firms (the so-called mutual fund supermarket may not require this as they make bucket investment, that is, they collect all investments from all investors into one particular fund and make one purchase then distributes shares to each individual investor. Scottrade used to do that several years ago, but not any more and you have to check with FT to see if they requires a minimum if the fund requires a minimum. Finally, all mutual funds investments with Scottrade have the option to reinvest dividend/capital gain distribution, but not with stocks/ETFs.

All these being said, I didn’t mean Scottrade is a better option. Actually, I think for mutual fund investments, whether in retirement accounts or regular account, the best choice is go with the fund company directly, though this may mean you have to manage many accounts if you purchase lots of funds from different companies, the cost is the lowest.

By: investing101

investing101 — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 04:18:38 +0000

For me, I plan to open a Roth IRA a/c (investments would be primarily in mutual funds). after some research i have decided on firstrade(FT) over scottrade(ST) among the discount brokerage firms primarily

- FT offers $9.99 in transaction fees for non-NTF no-load funds opposed to $17 of ST
- no minimum investment with FT vs. $500 min with ST
- option of divident reinvestment possible with FT but not with ST

By: The Sun

The Sun — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 22:04:03 +0000

Hi Jon:

Thanks for the information. I was always wondering how they make money by offering commission free trading. The fact that they use AdSense as well is also very interesting, but I doubt how much money they can make from that. Without marketing, it’s hard to get the word out and if people don’t know them, it’s hard to get the traffic to their site. I am taking the wait-and-see approach. Hopefully, they can maintain their model that benefits small investors. Once people have good words to say about them, they will get their customers.

By: Jon K

Jon K — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 13:45:36 +0000

Sun,
I’ve been investigating Zecco before opening an account. They are quite open about how they are able to offer commission free trades: each trade costs them about $2, which is less than the Etrade’s of the world because they have no marketing expenses. How do they make money? They earn about 3% interest on margin balances, as well as making some off your uninvested float. They also have advertising, including Adsense, on their website. I suppose it’s plausible that if you keep your expenses down, you can make a profit with this model.

By: The Sun

The Sun — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:57:31 +0000

I am guessing that there may be a connection between their fee-free trading and the $2500 minimum requirement to open an account as not many discount brokerage firms require that size of minimum any more. On the other hand, Sogo looks interesting because it also offers real-time trade with the same fee as automatic investment plan, and this part is better than Sharebuilder. It really looks like a good choice.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:27:49 +0000

Zecco does sound interesting, but like you said how sustainable could ad supported trading really be? I know sogoinvest is tied into an existing trading platform that lets them make a profit at their $1-$3 trades. And while they are not very old, their parent company has been around for a few years and is doing well. Plus if you were just starting out or doing it for a child Zecco’s $2500 minimum balance would pay for Sogo’s sharebuilder-like plans if invested in an MMA at 5%.

By: The Sun

The Sun — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 03:34:53 +0000

Chris: It’s true that when I wrote the post, I didn’t know about Sogo and had no experience with it. I only the company early this month and haven’t got time to take a look. From your link, I went to their website and found they indeed offer a very low fee for even real time trading, though it’s not free as Zecco offers. For Zecco, however, my problem is I don’t know how long they can last with zero commission. When the company charges a reasonable fee, it’s more believable to me.