I’m not going to have much invested to begin with - couple thousand bucks at most. I’ve got an etrade account, but they’ve got fairly high trade fees and if you don’t meet minimum deposit or activity criteria, they sock you with some pretty steep maintenance fees.
So is there anything better for a poor guy who doesn’t make too many trades, but wants to dabble (gamble) in the market?
if you can handle EVERYTHING online then the best value I’ve come across is Izone Ameritrade www.izone.com
trades are $5 each way -
Good Luck
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I use tradeking, it’s $4.95 a trade, works for me as someone that gambles with a little money like you.
interactive brokers, $1 a trade
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I use Scottrade, and had been pretty happy. However, they’ve put some sort of rule in place that funds deposited can’t be used on stocks with less than $4/share price for 3 days after deposit – which stinks. So, I would avoid them.
I think fees should be the least of your worries depending on how you trade. I used to trade for a living and I used to make a ton of money off of people who were using accounts based on fees. It was like stealing candy from a baby. It was legal stealing.
Can you explain this a little bit? I’m not sure I follow you…
+1 on the interactive brokers
you can also trade futures, options, and just about anything under the sun for next to nothing.
What’s Izone Ameritrade? I’m with TD and I visited the link you posted but I don’t understand the details. What’s the difference between TD and Izone? $5 per trade would be much better than the current $9.99.
That saves alot of money in the long term. I wanted to switch to IB but they aren’t as cheap as everybody says they are. I called them to specificially ask them about the commission structure. On 4,000 FAS, FAZ, etc. they said $20 per trade. I confirmed with the rep and that would mean $40 round trip. That’s a 100% increase over my current TD charges.
Please tell me more about izone if you have any info. I’ll also contact them tomorrow.
where do you live, US? I’m asking because I always hear how cheap IB is yet when I contacted them and spoke with an account rep they told me it would cost me $20 for a trade of 4,000 shares. That is one way, not round trip. How much do you pay for buying stocks? I know options are really cheap with IB but the stock trades were 100% more than my current TD Ameritrade charges. Of course there is more than just commission that is important but still.
Hm…I have never traded equities on IB; just options/futures/forex. I’ll log on tomorrow morning when the market opens and preview an order for you. I definitely don’t believe that it would be $20, the person you talked to probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about. stay tuned…
IB is indeed $1 per trade with equities, but that’s only up to a few hundred shares. Per the request of another ST’er, I previewed an order for 4,000 shares of URE and the estimated commission was indeed $20.