pmholzer wrote:
- quote -

Brokerages often earn fees by lending out shares of their customers,
but they rarely share those fees with customers. That may be changing,
according to a Forbes article
"Shortchanged", by Liz Moyer, 12.11.06
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1211/152.html .

Schwab and Smith Barney are two brokers cited by the article as giving
customers rebates on hard-to-borrow stocks, sometimes in the 10%/year
range. Academic research has found that hard-to-borrow stocks
underperform, but if one is going to own such a stock, a rebate is
obviously good.

<beliavsky[at]aol.com> wrote
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rs can bebacktested. Schwab's SER approach has not been backtested.Why not? That's what would really sell me on it.To its credit, Schwab is pretty forthcoming about its SERapproach. This speaks to the integrity of the company, IMO.> The slightly higher cost of Schwab compared to the deepdiscounters> should be weighed against premium services such as SER.As far as picking stocks is concerned, I recommend peopleseek instead brokerages with good online stock screeners,ideally also offering the customer a variety ofmuch-discussed strategies. I am a Fidelity customer and amimpressed with all the variations on stock screening itoffers, for one. Schwab may offer similar; I just have notgone looking for it.It's not that I have fondness for any particular, popularstrategy. It's that a lot of learning about what it means toinvest in stocks results by examining many differentstrategies. Just recognizing that there is wide disagreementover which strategy will reap the most returns is h!
ighlyinstructive.

Schwab is solid - I have used them for years with several different
accounts, their equity rating service is good and just reviewed as
another poster said.
pmholzer wrote:
- quote -

pmholzer wrote:
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Unlike most other discount brokerage firms, Schwab has its own stock
recommendation service, "Schwab Equity Ratings" (SER)
http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/...equity_ratings
. There was an interview in this week's Barron's with the head of that
group, which uses a quantitative approach that makes sense to me. I
think SER has outperformed the S&P 500 and the recommendations of most
investment banks.

The slightly higher cost of Schwab compared to the deep discounters
should be weighed against premium services such as SER.

I am a financial "quant" but have no connection with Schwab.

I have several of the various fund companies....
Over the years, chasing different types of funds,
I've invested mutual funds in Fidelity, T.Rowe, Vanguard, American Century,
Janus, and Schwab for stocks...
All have been ok.... Still have one or two funds at each company.
When I worked downtown, there was a Schwab & Fidelity office near us.
Before that, I've had Vanguard funds for years, or is that decades
T.Rowe had some Asian & Health funds that I added... (market has since caught
up)
Currently, the ETF's almost make it a coin toss of Mutual Funds vs ETFs.

Thanks for the responses. I suppose what I am looking for is a company
that will provide me with a wide range of mutual funds (including NTFs,
good bond funds and international funds). I imagine that for the
present time, the bulk of my transactions will be within our IRA
accounts.

I am getting the idea from the replies to my orginal post that "i could
do worse" than Schwab, but I am looking for a good decision. Thanks.

Patrick

- quote -

"Elle" <honda.lioness[at]nospam.earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:GY0ah.3201$sf5.246[at]newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net...
- quote -

Its actively managed funds are typically only 15-20 basis points higher cost
than its index funds. Very few families come close (DFA, American,
TIAA-CREF come to mind).

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Vanguard's funds are fine, great in fact, but Vanguard shares a problem with
Fidelity and other large fund families in finding it difficult to offer good
small cap funds. If you have to lock yourself into one family, Vanguard is
fine, but the OP rightly asked about NTF funds, to diversify across
families. That means using a brokerage.

Vanguard (and T. Rowe Price, American Century) brokerages seem to be set up
for their fund investors who want to trade an occasional blue chip stock,
not for people looking first for a brokerage. Vanguard Brokerage
Services(R) (VBS) does not offer a cash management account until you reach
Voyager ($250K) level. That means no small checks (only checks out of you
MM account), no ATM access, no bill pay service, etc.
https://flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/...VAAContent.jsp

They are available only 8AM-8PM ET, M-F. (This is an issue that Schwab has
had as well. A couple of years ago, in an attempt to economize, Schwab cut
back on 24 hour phone service. It has since restored all 24 hours.)

I've used a variety of brokers and fund families. They all have warts.
Your choice does depend on what you consider important. I use Vanguard for
funds; I don't see someone using them as a brokerage, except as a Flagship
($1M) customer, or as a Voyager ($250K) customer to buy Treasuries. YMMV.

Mark Freeland
BnetOnewsX[at]sbcglobal.net

Hi Patrick,

These days brokerage web sites make it easy to compare one
company with another, especially when we are talking about
companies as big as Schwab. Schwab competes well with
Fidelity and is superior to Vanguard as far as stock
transaction commissions and "no fee account minimums" are
concerned. You could use Schwab to buy stocks and ETFs and
probably have the least, or nearly the least, expensive
transaction costs available.

Vanguard's main advantage is its many low expense mutual
funds. It is famous for these, though the competition has
been catching up, especially in the ETF arena. So it's hard
to argue to go with Vanguard at the moment. Bond fund
offerings will probably still be best at Vanguard, compared
to anyone else, though.

Disclaimer: I am a 20+ year Fidelity customer, but if I had
it to do over, I would have gone with Vanguard at the
beginning, because back then, its mutual fund offerings were
superior. I remain with Fidelity because I am dealing almost
exclusively in stocks these days; its customer service is
highly competent and courteous; terrific web site; low cost
index ETFs are now available.

"pmholzer" <pmholzer[at]mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:1164469867.957515.168010[at]14g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

There's no single best answer - it depends on how much weight you place on
each of the factors you mention (and more). Connsumersearch surveys the
various magazines for ratings articles and summarizes their findings here:
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/in...rs/review.html

Schwab's plusses include good service, wide variety of NTF mutual funds
(including the occasional load waiver that you won't find elsewhere), local
offices, good research (including Goldman Sachs). Main downsides are higher
commissions (including $50 fee for non-NTF funds) and a fee structure that
seems to change every year or two (they just went to "simplified pricing"
this year).

If you are not trading stocks frequently (the base commission is $13), you
could do a lot worse than Schwab.

Mark Freeland
BnetOnewsX[at]sbcglobal.net

I am about to open a Roth IRA for both my wife and I and a co-worker
recommended Schwab. I would like to possibly buy individual stocks
outside of our IRAs. Is Schwab a good broker(fees, available funds,
etc) or should I look into the deeper discount brokerages?

Thanks.

Patrick