what is your take on sharebuilder.com?

Answer 1

As a way to get started investing in stocks with a small amount of money, Sharebuilder is fine. They are a reputable company. Remember however, that it is probably more prudent to get started investing by using mutual funds, and more specifically, a broad based index fund, so use your Sharebuilder account to buy index ETFs (exchange traded funds), one example of which is SPY (an ETF that tracks the S&P 500.)

Answer 2

Not really positive. I did write them a letter stated the reason I move my account to Scottrade of my Roth IRA.
They charge you the maintaince fee yearly of 25$ if you are in the basic plan
The stock purchase plan only do it in weekly. they seem cheap when you purchase. But when you want to buy/sell in real-time, they charge you 16.00.
The most imorttant part, US market is still in the SECULAR BEAR (mega trend), buy and hold did not work in the secular bear market( meaning the market change in sideway and downward). you lose your money by buy and hold method.
The nasdq, the SP500, the dow is nowhere near thier all time high in 1999-2000. This bear market still have long way to go. Buy and Hold don't work in the bear market.
Buy and hold worked in the 80s,90s, because we are in the secular bull, the average return for those years is 15%.
After I write that letter, I moved my money to Scottrade. It s simple math too
add buy and sell trade together (4+16=20)
with scottrade or trade king(7+7=14, or tradeking, you save 6$ right there)
do the math, you do 20 trade/year, you save 120 right off the bat

Answer 3

For a beginning investor that wants to invest a small amount say weekly or monthly in a particular stock or closed end mutual fund, it is a convenient and inexpensive way to do so.