Shop Talk

Re: Best online broker question

RatonBob — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:37:51 GMT

I chose Firstrade for a similar purpose, to buy/sell individual stocks of interest outside of my IRA. At the time they were, or almost were, the very lowest price. $6.95 trade commissions, no minimum balances, no min to start an account, no min trades, and no account fees. It wasn't a difficult system to learn and I've had no significant problems; there have been zero surprises or hidden fees.

The only minor glitch was learning how to sign up for reinvesting dividends.

There are some new brokerages around today with lower commissions that might be worth investigating. KingTrade, for example.

A bit OT, but I also chose Firstrade for The Boy's ESA account. The reason, the initial mutual funds I was interested in happened to be NTF at Firstrade.

Re: Best online broker question

HappyT90 — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:37:18 GMT

Zecco gives 10 trades a month as long as you invest more than $2,500. However, I probably wouldn't recommend them to you because they have a very complicated interface that is definitely not for beginner investors. I personally use Firstrade. They're $6.95 per trade, definitely more expensive than Zecco, but still cheaper than big name discount brokers like Scottrade. I've used Firstrade for a couple years now and I am very happy with them. I'd definitely recommend Firstrade.

Best online broker question

LA-ron — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:05:16 GMT

Good morning everyone. I was wondering what everyone's opinion or thoughts were on the best online broker. I am 32 and my wife and I have funded Roth IRAs for the last 6 years as well as our retirement at work. We also have additional money set aside in various mutual funds. I would like to take a little money and just try my hand at stock picking. It would be a small amount (< $5,000 or about 1% of our portfolio) to just play around and I would guess about 10 trades a month. The $5,000 would not be a big part of our portfolio and if I lost it all would be no big deal. I would consider it a life lesson learned and just stick to mutual funds. I have done my own homework but would also very much appreicate any other input. Thanks