optionsXpress 5 Free Trades for a New IRA Account

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 $500, either as bank deposit or securities transferred from another broker, you will receive 5 free trades, valued at $74.75. The free trades will be credited within two weeks after the account is opened and funded in the form of $14.95 commission per trade for the first five trades. The new fund has to remain in the account for at least 12 months, or the credit will be forfeited.

Sure, optionsXpress isn’t really a *discount* broker because its commission is rather high (see discount broker comparison for commissions charged by brokers for stock, options, and mutual fund trades) when compared with others. But there’s one little nice thing about optionsXpress: It also has a referral program that lets you earn 10 free trades for every person you refer to optionsXpress (you can select to receive $100 bonus instead). So if you don’t trade a lot, a couple of referrals will let you trade commission free for quite a long time Also, the broker recently launched a standalone trading platform Xtend, which is pretty cool.

Early, OptionsHouse also offered commission free trades for new IRA account.