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geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: Input Nirvana on Sat, 15 June 2013, 19:12:00
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Anyone have positive/negative opinions of an online stock service you've used? (E*trade, Schwab, Fidelity, etc)
In the past I've used E*Trade and Schwab. Not a major investor, just some in/out trades of penny stocks mostly. I made a fortune/lost a fortune in commodities and tech. I keep it reasonable now.
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I used Ameritrade long ago; then they started getting all shifty because at the time (college student) I had like a $600 balance and they didn't want me if I wasn't going to keep $2000 or trade all the time.
I've been using Sharebuilder now; it's *different* -- their product is designed for long-term holding, so they have relatively few inactivity -related costs.
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Good info. I want to blow and go, not full time, not a lot of trades, not a lot of money, (probably only $1000).
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TD Ameritrade (now) no longer acts that way. I have been all over the map in regard to balances (including months on end of $0000 :) )
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I use Scottrade. Works well.
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Thanks for the thoughts.
I was taking a look at this, but I don't know how much I will do, may only be a couple trades in a couple months. Review sites can be sketchy.
http://online-stock-trading-review.toptenreviews.com
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Sharebuilder $7/$0
TDAmeritrde $10/$0
Scottrade $7/$500
ETrade $10/$500
Based on price this is my list. Sharebuilder and TDAmeritrade look good with no minimum, so if I cash out I can easily retain account to jump in again. Although $500 minimum (Scottrade and ETrade) are very reasonable.
Next considerations are ease of use, some tools, buy/sell orders. For what little I'm doing at this point (looking at one penny stock), and whatever else to keep me motivated and in the game. Any last thoughts you guys? I hope to make a purchase tonight before the market opens Monday in the U.S.
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I use Scottrade. Pretty straightforward, no hidden fees, but I've concentrating on other stuff for awhile so my trading has taken a backseat.
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I eliminated ETrade from my list. So Sharebuilder, TDAmeritrade, Scottrade are what's left. Not many trades so $7 vs $10 isn't a big deal, and I figure I hope to keep at least $500 invested so the minimum with Scottrade may not be a problem.
I thought Sharebuilder was $7 trades, but I'm trying to verify, there may be some restrictions (auto-trading only?). I think they are throwing you $50 if you join right now. But I just noticed they may tack on .007 per share on a trade of under $1.00 market value...so 1000 shares would be another $7 in addition to the $6.95...did I do that right? LOL Scottrade looks to be .005 per share. Perhaps TDAmeritrade with the $10 trade fee won't have the surcharge.
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I've used Schwab, good customer service and fast trade execution. I liked them even more when they finally released StreetSmart Edge, a software trading platform.
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I eliminated ETrade from my list. So Sharebuilder, TDAmeritrade, Scottrade are what's left. Not many trades so $7 vs $10 isn't a big deal, and I figure I hope to keep at least $500 invested so the minimum with Scottrade may not be a problem.
I thought Sharebuilder was $7 trades, but I'm trying to verify, there may be some restrictions (auto-trading only?). I think they are throwing you $50 if you join right now. But I just noticed they may tack on .007 per share on a trade of under $1.00 market value...so 1000 shares would be another $7 in addition to the $6.95...did I do that right? LOL Scottrade looks to be .005 per share. Perhaps TDAmeritrade with the $10 trade fee won't have the surcharge.
Oh yea, I forgot that Scottrade does have extra fees for penny trades. But I never found that to be much of a hidden fee. They made that fact quite obvious.
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The stock I'm looking at varies between .50 and 1.05 and I'm looking at 1000 shares and maybe leverage another 500 should the stock drop substantially, so the fees are about double the $7 upfront charge. I'm only hoping to make a couple hundred so $15 fees buy and again on the sell side eat into that. Haven't seen that with Ameritrade, but it's $10 per trade.
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I use Firstrade (or First Trade, I forget). I opened the account because it was cheap but I'm happy with the service
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I use Firstrade (or First Trade, I forget). I opened the account because it was cheap but I'm happy with the service
Do they have a minimum to keep in the account? $500, $1000, $2,000?
EDIT---looks like no minimum.
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The stock I'm looking at varies between .50 and 1.05 and I'm looking at 1000 shares and maybe leverage another 500 should the stock drop substantially, so the fees are about double the $7 upfront charge. I'm only hoping to make a couple hundred so $15 fees buy and again on the sell side eat into that. Haven't seen that with Ameritrade, but it's $10 per trade.
A word of advice on this. Penny stocks can be risky, I've lost a bunch on them. If they're on the pink sheets (OTC) market your trade times are going to be a bit delayed as will current price and market data (even in this day of electronic trading).
Always be weary of stocks below $10 a share (SEC defines a penny stock as being less than $5, but extending it to $10 adds a lot of safety to your portfolio). You have to buy a lot of shares to offset the trading fees and many times the companies are small to a point where its difficult to perform research on them (unless you're all about the statistics of a stock). I like doing more qualitative research on a company to ensure they're stability and profit potential.
Schwab I think are about $8 trades and they'll be in the same priority as Ameritrade.
Edit: That being said, I've doubled my money with AMD by buying at the right time, they were technically in the penny stock range at the time.
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I eliminated ETrade from my list. So Sharebuilder, TDAmeritrade, Scottrade are what's left. Not many trades so $7 vs $10 isn't a big deal, and I figure I hope to keep at least $500 invested so the minimum with Scottrade may not be a problem.
I thought Sharebuilder was $7 trades, but I'm trying to verify, there may be some restrictions (auto-trading only?). I think they are throwing you $50 if you join right now. But I just noticed they may tack on .007 per share on a trade of under $1.00 market value...so 1000 shares would be another $7 in addition to the $6.95...did I do that right? LOL Scottrade looks to be .005 per share. Perhaps TDAmeritrade with the $10 trade fee won't have the surcharge.
Sharebuilder has two different schemes-- you can buy stock at real-time for like $7, or for $4, you can set up a scheduled trade. I haven't used the real-time stuff, but wiith the scheduled trades, you say "I want $200 worth of Norfolk Southern" and then they'll draw the money out of the account, and process all such orders once a week. If you miss Tuesday, you have to do the order the next Tuesday, This is obviously not suitable for trying to time the market exactly, but it's very convenient for their intended use case, which is to set up recurring purchases-- "I want $200 worth of Norfolk Southern once a month, every month, on the second tuesday of the month". IIRC, all sales are done at real-time, and I know when I tried to buy a penny-stock, they said it couldn't be bought through the scheduled purchase system. The specific stock was very sparsely traded-- an average volume of something like $200 per day. The real-time fees used to be mich higher, like $20, but are now $7 or so.
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The stock I have some interest in is TUNG (tungsten) thought it was interesting because it just made a massive drop to it's lowest, thought I could catch a little something on a rebound next week.
This is called an unqualified "STOCK TIP" hahaha
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Spoke to a couple more friends, and now I'm motivated to consider doing some frequent in/out day trades making a few bucks each hit. I have day trader mentality, not investor mentality. In about a month I'm getting some more cash to free up and will hopefully be ready with a service (need to do most activity on the go with iPhone).
Any thoughts what might be +/- using iPhone as the primary buy/sell interaction?
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What could go wrong? :rolleyes:
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I meant that I will probably be using iPhone during the day to conduct buy/sell and gather pricing info. Thought there might be some better methods/apps/services to make that work better.
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TDAmeritrade
$0 min
$10 trades
no surcharges on under $1 stock
I just need to get real time market info on iPhone instead of 20 min delay!!!!
Now to go chase that dog stock that is half what it was when I started this thread.
Actually I think it's a scam stock, lol
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Well at least you didn't invest in this:
(http://i.imgur.com/Fd54Dsj.png)
This is why penny stocks are dangerous.
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Daaaannggg...looks like a person that turned into a zombie getting an EKG...
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Daaaannggg...looks like a person that turned into a zombie getting an EKG...
I **** my pants when I checked my daily percent change for that stock was negative 95%...
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That was a ONE DAY drop/loss????
Shizzzz