Will Trice wrote:

- quote -

If you have a reasonable amount of money to invest, Wells Fargo is
another option. When you open a brokerage account and what they call a
PMA checking account and link the two, you get 100 free trades per
year. The trades include equities and no-load mutual funds.

A "year" is based on the date you open the account, so another 100
every anniversary. This has the advantage of giving you a bunch up
front if you need to build the initial portfolio versus the 10 per
month, although fewer overall.

The catch is that the PMA account has a $25 a month fee. That would
wipe some of the advantage of free trades, but if you have $25,000 in
qualifying assets, the fee is waived. Qualifying assets include cash in
the PMA, everything in the brokerage account, any IRAs, and 10% of
mortgage balance if your loan is with them.

A slight annoyance with Wells Fargo is that they haven't fully embraced
the online way of doing business. For instance, when funding the
brokerage account with an ACH, they wanted mailed-in proof of account
ownership via a canceled check. You might as well just fund with a
check. They also have forms (like backup witholding) that are need to
be physically signed and returned, although you can download the form
and fax it back in. Some may view this as a positive thing.




Brian

Will Trice <wwtrice[at]paragondynamics.com> writes:

- quote -

The young fellow over at MyMoneyBlog has switched to
Zecco and seems pretty happy about it - for the things
for which it seems best suited - ie. it's not for everyone
for everything. He did a two-part review back in May '07
and has several followups about it. Go to
http://www.MyMoneyBlog.com and search for Zecco.

As little as I trade things which have commissions (ie. ETFs
and stocks), I'm quite happy with Fidelity and recommend it
for most folks who've asked me lately where to go. If
you are going to work with Vanguard funds and *only* Vanguard
funds, go directly to them and start with a money-market
fund, but for any kind of wider range of services - cash
management, bill payment, access to stocks, etfs and non-Vanguard
funds, I'd look first at Fidelity. They are not the
cheapest - not by far - and there are places with somewhat
larger lists of NTF funds - but the things which folks can
save on elsewhere (ie. trading commissions) - how actively
do you plan on trading?

It would help the discussion, I think, if you could
describe a bit more about how you plan on actually using
the account(s) in question.

That MyMoneyBlog fellow has review (and screenshots) from
several other ultra-low-cost brokerages.

FWIW, I've been generally pretty happy with my ETrade
account, too. They have cheaper non-NTF fund fees, and
their commissiosn are a little cheaper than Fido. Their
online savings and checking bank accounts are quite good.
But, while I'm not seriously concerned about ETrade's
future as a going concern (they are suffering badly under
the subprime mortgage situation), I am a little concerned
that they may be acquired by another broker or otherwise
go through some near-term changes - none of which are
likely to cost us anything, but which may present some
small inconveniences until it's all resolved.


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Hey all,

I want to roll a 401(k) into Roth and traditional IRAs and I'm thinking
about trying Zecco as an online brokerage. They advertise 10 free
trades/month for accounts over $2500. Has anybody here tried them?
What's the catch on their cost? How do they make their money? They
don't seem to have a lot of advertising, but maybe that changes after
you open an account?

Thanks!
-Will

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