Is Zecco a good deal? Any exp. in discount broker fees? Please help!?

Question

I am looking at starting a Roth IRA with a minimum initial investment. Someone reccomended this free online broker, but what are these other possible charges? and would any apply to me if I just want to trade stocks Within my IRA? These are a few, I don't inderstand what this stuff is. Can you look at thier faq and interpret this stuff for me?

http://www.zecco.com/trading/FreeTrading.aspx?tab=WhatsNotFree

This is the thing about the free IRA stuff:
http://www.zecco.com/trading/ZeccoIRA.aspx?_s_icmp=KbX73Dx8

144 Sales $35.00 plus regular commission
Accommodation Transfers $25.00 plus certificate fees per issue
Automated Customer Account Transfer (ACAT) $50.00 per account
Physical Stock Deposit $50.00
Prepays on Customer Trades $10.00 plus interest to settlement date
Reg. “T” Extension $10.00 per request plus interest from settlement date until paid

Answer 1

I took a quick look and the fees don't look too bad. It all depends on how large your account is, how you trade, and how often you plan to trade.

Although they have very low transaction fees, you need to be aware about their fills. Perhaps they don't get as good of a price as other brokerages. Or if you do a lot of transactions (non trade related), you'll rack up a lot of fees.

Now if you just trade occasionally or do some option trading, the prices aren't too bad.

There are a lot of good brokerages depending on what you like and how you trade.

Here's some info on other online brokers so you can do a little more research and pick who you think is best.

Barron's has a great article on brokerages that they publish each year. (Latest one was in March 6, 2006). Kiplinger does one too.

Here’s the link to the Barron’s article.
http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1550280182488.html

Here’s the link to the Kiplinger’s July 2006 article which isn’t bad either.
http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2006/07/brokers.html


For basic stuff, E*Trade, Ameritrade, and Scottrade are sufficient. For more complex trades, I'd recommend Optionsxpress, ThinkorSwim, or interactivebrokers.

Based on what you put in your question, I'd recommend one of the first three, but all are very good. Cheapest probably is scottrade (of the larger online firms). Yes there are cheaper like interactivebrokers, but you'll have to get used to their software based platform (which is doable). They're only about $1/contract on options!

Brokerages like Fidelity are horrible for anyone with any decent experience.

So, decide what's important to you as a trader and compare the brokers! You can use the article, or go to each website as they all seem to have comparison charts!

And if there are particular things that you want to mention as being most important to you (such as executions, cust svc, cheapest trade, flexibility on allowing you to do certain types of trades, stop and stop limit orders, contingent orders, great graphing, what if scenarios, training, etc), I'll be glad to help discuss this with you too!

If you have any questions, let me know.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

I'm also looking at Zecco, have the paperwork filled out, but haven't made the plunge of sending it in yet. Of those you mentioned,

144 sales: You won't be dealing with this, so don't even worry about it.

Accommodation Transfers and Automated Customer Account Transfer: I believe both of these fees are for outgoing transfers, not incoming. I'd have to check that to be sure though.

Physical Stock Deposit: Probably, you won't need to worry about this one unless you have some old stock certificates lying around somewhere.

Prepays on Customer Trades: If you need the stock trade to settle now rather than three business days after the trade, you'd pay this fee. I don't think you can do that in an IRA, though I'm not 100% sure. Because IRAs are cash accounts by definition, I don't think you can force a prepay on a cash account. You just have to wait for the settlement date.

Reg. "T" Extension: This is only valid for margin accounts. An IRA can not be a margin account, (because it would count as a distribution to borrow money) so you don't need to worry about this one either.

I hope that helps you some.