Best online service for buying stocks?

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Posted by Ohioguy on December 25, 2009, 11:29 am
 


   I've had a Scottrade account for years.  It lets me buy and sell
stocks for $7.  I put a little more than $350 a year into each of my
kids' custodial Roth IRA accounts I've set up.  Typically, between
August and December, I re-evaluate the stocks in each of the portfolios,
to make sure they still appear to be value stocks.  If they have
appreciated to the point where I no longer feel they are a value, AND
the dividend is either low or future growth appears limited, I'll sell
the stock and look for a new one that I feel is a value.  At this point,
since we are still talking about just a few hundred (for the newest) to
a few thousand for my 6 year old, I've held off on selling, since I
realize that if I buy and sell too much chasing returns, I could
actually eat into the portfolio performance.

   Anyway, today I saw an ad for sharebuilder, advertising $4 trades.  I
thought, "Hmm - maybe I've been paying too much for trades?"  So I
looked into it, and the $4 is only for automated weekly or monthly
trades.  That would mean spending a minimum of $48 a year to buy,
instead of the ~ $6 to $12 a year I currently spend through Scottrade.
Not a deal, so I forgot about that.

   However, it did get me thinking - is Scottrade truly the lowest
priced online place for buying and selling stocks if you just do it a
few times a year, and are working with smaller amounts?  I thought I
would ask here to see if any of you had experiences you could share.

Posted by Balvenieman on December 25, 2009, 12:33 pm
 





    All else equal, Scottrade is as cheap as you're going to find, IME.
I have an account with Tradeking. Online trades are $6.95
unconditionally; no maintenance or inactivity fee; linked to insured
interest-bearing online bank account; many online services free to
active traders.

Posted by terrable on December 26, 2009, 11:38 am
 



Two cheap brokers are SogoTrade at $3.00 and optionshouse at $2.95. Mixed
reviews for both as some people like them and some people hate them.



Posted by SoCalMike on December 29, 2009, 11:44 pm
 

Ohioguy wrote:


i looked into sharebuilder through costco when i was researching
alternatives right before the crash last year. scottrade was the best
alternative for what i wanted to do, which was primarily buy and hold
for a while. id been waiting for a time to jump in and buy. so far, so
good. up 40% since then with my only regret being i wish id bought more
ford stock. its quintupled in price since i bought my 400 shares.

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