Price Wars With Online Stock Brokers
If you watch enough TV, you’ll see everyone of the discount online brokers advertisements. Each of them stating that they have the best price for trading stocks online as well as claiming they have the best customer service, quickest trade time. If you haven’t started to trade stocks and you’re looking to open an account with one of these major online brokers, don’t get caught in the hype of their sales pitch. You need to research which one is right for you.
I’ve been with TD Ameritrade for years now and I plan on staying with them for the rest of my trading years. You can read about my thoughts and review of TD Ameritrade to see what I mean. That doesn’t mean that you have to do the same thing and only deal with TD Ameritrade. I suggest you look into each of the other competitors to see which one works for you. I have a friend who doesn’t like my broker and he uses E-Trade.
E-Trade is a good reliable broker and also takes good care of their customers. Their prices for regular trades vary a little. If you do less than 150 trades per quarter (three months), your trade fee will be $9.99 per trade, however if you do more than that in the same time period, the fee is only $7.99 per trade. So if you don’t expect to make that many trades in one quarter, it’s something to think about. E-Trade’s option fees are work the same way, at the same pricing plus $0.75 per contract. I feel E-trade is not for a beginner or for someone who isn’t so active in trading on a daily basis.
Scottrade is probably the most known out of all the online brokers. Scottrade is more reasonable when it comes to their stock trades and their option pricing. They charge $7 per trade for wither stocks or options. The price is only for online trades. If you call into their automated trade desk, the fee is $17 per trade and if you call a representative to make a trade, it wil be considered a broker-assisted trade and you’ll be charged $27 per trade. Scottrade does have many different fees involved with each service you may need, but remember that you get what you pay for, They have been know to be the best at customer service within the online discount brokers.
What about the new kid on the block, Zecco? To be quite honest I’ve never used them since they are relatively new to the game. I will say that they do offer the lowest prices when it comes to making a trade. Zecco will give you ten free trades every month and charge you $4.50 per trade afterwards. Remember that you must maintain a balance of $25,000 or make at least twenty-five trades per month or you will be charged the $4.50 for each and every trade. As for their option trades, it’s the same price as stock trades plus $0.50 per contract. I have not used Zecco, but I will say that I’ve talked to a few people who do use them and they all pretty much say the same thing when it comes to customer service. They don’t care about it. These traders I’ve talked to don’t use Zecco for their customer service, they are just in it because they do their own research and due diligence that the only thing they care about is the low fee per trade.
So whichever one you want to use, you need to think about which one will be best for your needs. After all, it’s your portfolio and not anyone else’s you worry about.
© 2010 Buy Stocks OnlineGet Your Free Stock Market Tips
Tags: ameritrade, e trade, ING, Investing, Investing online, online stock broker, online stock brokers, Scottrade, Stock, stock broker, stock trades, stocks, TD Ameritrade, trade stocks, trading stock, trading stocks, Zecco
Related posts
Why You Should Buy Stocks Online
Stocks can be a great way to really make some serious money. Many people though really have no way to trade stocks or know too much about them. Sure, you could go into your town and find a stock broker, but likely there will be tons of fees that really would cut into your profit margin if you do find a good stock. Another option is to buy stocks online.
Online stock brokers offer you an extremely easy way to buy and sell stocks. Online stock broker websites provide real time updates of not only stock prices, but also the amount of money in your account. There are many sites that do this. The most notable sites that do this are Scottrade, Etrade, Zecco, and TradeKing.
These sites offer very cheap prices for memberships and stock trading. Most of these sites only charge between five and ten dollars per trade. If you think about it, dealing with a broker at a physical location, you would be paying much more than five or ten dollars for every trade they make for you. This is a great deal for anyone looking to buy stock. These sites offer not only great deals but also give you incentives for using their products.
For example, ETrade currently is offering one hundred free trades when you sign up to use their service. Compare that to site like Scottrade, that is pretty much saving you seven hundred dollars worth of trades if you compare the two sites. I personally have used all of the sites I have listed and do like Scottrade the best, with ETrade following close behind. They make everything so easy for you, and everything is spelled out for you in your account details. You can see exactly how much is in your account, how much of your money is in what stock, and more importantly, you can buy or sell a stock with the click of the button and understand the stock market basics. This is great since a stock may hit a high during the day and you want to sell it, or conversely a low during the day and you want to buy more of it.
Online stock brokers have revolutionized the stock process and is making regular every day people turn into stock investors.
Check out other posts in this site for free stock market tips.
Related posts
Buy Stocks Online – Zecco
With all the places to buy stocks online, it’s hard to choose one of them. I’m sure you’ve heard of many of them, but there are a few that you haven’t. One of the ones that you might not be familiar with is Zecco.com
Zecco.com is on of the smaller discount online brokers that is becoming a major player in the world of online trading. They’ve been around for sometime and from the looks of it, they won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. They have a lot to offer the average trader when it comes to tools and education toward stock trading.
What kind of tools do they offer? Performance tracking and tax planning tools as well as their streaming quotes are just few of the many. Of course as with many of the online brokers, they basically all offer the same thing, some better than others. They have a section for education that seems to be quite in depth.
Investing basics, fundamental analysis along with technical analysis will help you catch on to the things that are needed to make it in any type of market. Learning to make money in wither a bull or a bear market is very important to understand. Want to learn how to trade oil? they have the resources to help you in that area too.
They offer a section titled “Community” that can point you in the direction of blog, forums and other place to go for support and ideas. That’s one thing that many of the other discount online brokers don’t offer as of yet.
What do they charge for trades? well, to start of with, they will give you ten free trades every month if you have over $2500 in your account. As for trading options, it’s $4.50 per leg plus $0.50 per contract. If you want to set up a margin account, the charge ranges from 4.70% to 7.20% depending on your balance in your account.
As with any of the many discount online brokers, you need to look around to see which one is right for you.
Tags: bear market, Buy Stocks Online, free trades, fundamental analysis, investing basics, margin account, money, online broker, online brokers, stock trading, stocks, tax planning, trades, Zecco

