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 [...]

Do you want to have a TradeKing brokerage account?
If you do, then here’s a chance for you to receive $50 to get started.
Discount online broker TradeKing is celebrating Ben Franklin’s birthday this year by offer a $100 bonus for existing users for every new customer they refer to TradeKing. Since I am already using [...]

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 [...]

eToro provides a visual forex software with the trading tools you need at the click of a button. The eToro Forex Platform makes forex trading easy for beginners with online forex tutorials, trading guides, and a practice mode featuring live forex rates. eToro’s intuitive interface is also ideal for expert forex traders with all of [...]

ChoiceTrade is an online discount broker which I first discussed in April when I compared commissions charged by discount brokers. Currently at $5 per stock trade with no limit on the size of the order, ChoiceTrade’s commission is almost at the same level as what TradeKing charges at $4.95 for stock trades, but significantly higher [...]

Despite the relatively high commission cost (Scottrade charges $7 for each online stock order, market or limit), I have been using Scottrade for years and it’s my primary stock broker, not only because of its excellent customer service, but also that I can actually trade with Scottrade for free. That’s right, I don’t pay [...]