How reliable is Zecco?

Question

zecco.com offers free trades, and it all sounds great but they don't have much reputation yet established. anyone heard of them/have any advice for me?

im thinking either them or scottrade.com

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 though the 2007 article “just” came out). Kiplinger does one too.

Here’s the link to the 2006 Barron’s article.
http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1550280182488.html

Here’s the link to the new Barron’s 2007 – Best online Brokers 3/5/07
http://online.barrons.com/public/article/SB117288684364425609-wsYkdd74F9ukYSQgQJifDpHYwsY_20070402.html?mod=mktw

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!

P.S. I just found a link to a review of reviews as well! Here it is:
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/internet/online-brokers/reviews.html

Answer 2

you would be better off with scottrade if these are your only two chioces. Zecco has serious curtomer service issues and you can set up an ACH account with scottrade in seconds. I was also on think or swim and bailed out of them when they tried to explain to me that PIQ was a penny stock and that's why I could not purchase it. (PIQ is an ETF from Powershares). No serious issues with scottrade yet.

Answer 3

Very Reliable.

I am a Portfolio Manager with over a decade of experience in the Stock Market and I recommend you Zecco if you have less than $25,000.00 USD.