Your online broker
Posted on January 20th, 2009 – 4:00 PMBy Kara McGuire
Frequent reader Brian has this question: Since stocks and mutual funds are “on sale” any recommendations on a discount/online broker?
Today’s a good day to ask that question. The market certainly didn’t get caught up in the Inauguration Day inspiration and excitement.
The Dow is currently trading below 8,000, although it won’t close for another couple of minutes.
Stocks on sale indeed.
Let’s hope they don’t get marked down again tomorrow!
5 Responses to "Your online broker"
If you have $25,000 with them, Wells Fargo is the way to go — 100 free trades per year in each account as long as you have a PMA account, and $5.95 for each trade after that. If you have less than that, Scottrade is pretty good…
See: https://www.wellsfargo.com/checking/pma/
“The PMA Package is free of the $25 monthly service fee for each month the statement-ending balances in qualifying deposit accounts, credit accounts (10% of outstanding eligible mortgages), and brokerage accounts (available through Wells Fargo Investments, LLC), total $25,000 or more.”
-Ryan
I tend to avoid giving Wells Fargo advice just because I don’t like their fee structure which seems to be, “We’re Wells Fargo so here’s a fee for the privilege of letting us hold your money”
I’m a sharebuilder account holder myself. $4 or less per trade and no minimums.
Chris,
Sharebuilder is a good option if you are going to buy stocks consistently on a regular basis and sell them infrequently. Since only buy trades are $4 and sells are $9.95, and in order to get the $4, you have to buy on Tuesday, it can be a bit limiting.
-Ryan
Here’s a tip: don’t day-trade. Set up an account with Vanguard and buy diversified, low-cost, index mutual funds and forget about all the fees.
There are some minimums but I believe there are options if you commit to regular investments.
There’s a reason Vanguard.com is on Kara’s list of links to the right.
Check out Tradeking.com They’re cheap ~ 4.95 a trade, have a user friendly interface and have a bunch of convenient ways to reach them (email,phone,chat,etc.) I’ve been using for nearly 2 years and love them.
Note they do push option trading, but I wouldn’t dabble in that unless you are confident in it!
