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ShareBuilder to Lower Commissions March 1st
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I just received an email from Sharebuilder, now owned by Capital One, and it seems one benefit of the ING Direct acquisition by Capital One is that commissions on trades at Sharebuilder will be going down on March 1st. A bit.
Before the change, Sharebuilder Basic customers were paying $9.95 a trade while Sharebuilder Advantage customers paid $7.95 a trade. While not expensive from an absolute perspective, there are plenty of brokers who charge more, it’s a lot compared to many discount brokers. I use TradeKing and they’ve only charged $4.95 a trade for quite some time now. You can get even cheaper trades from OptionsHouse at $3.95 a trade.
On March 1st, online trades will go to $6.95 for real time online trades. For Basic customers, it’s a $3 drop; only $1 for Advantage customers. This is still higher than the $4 they charge for automatic investments.
If you’re looking for a discount broker, Sharebuilder, even with the lowered rates, wouldn’t be on my list. I’ve never used OptionsHouse so I can’t say much about them but TradeKing has always treated me well. If you qualify for Vanguard’s Voyager Select ($500k-$1mm in invested assets) or Flagship ($1mm+), you get $2 trades (Flagship customers get 25 commission free) – but that’s not exactly a fair comparison.
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Scotrade is another option – trades are as low as $4.95
ML Edge – just put in 50k or more, and get 30 free trades every month