In the latest issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, they rated a dozen discount brokers on a variety of factors including commission, research & tools, fees, investment options, “easy of use,” and customer service. The results were pretty close to the results of Smart Money’s 2008 ranking of the best discount brokers.

Kiplinger’s Best Discount Brokers

1. Fidelity
2. Charles Schwab
3. Muriel Siebert
4. TradeKing
5. E*Trade
6. OptionsHouse
7. TD Ameritrade
8. WellsTrade
9. Firstrade
10. OptionsXpress
11. Zecco
12. Scottrade

VS. Smart Money 2008 Best Discount Brokers

Smart Money’s best were:

1. E*Trade
2. Fidelity
3. TradeKing
4. TD Ameritrade
5. Charles Schwab

Looking solely at these two rankings, Fidelity did the best scoring a 1st and 2nd across the two lists. Charles Schwab, TradeKing, and E*trade also remained consistently in the Top 5. The only real difference is in the ranking of TD Ameritrade and Muriel Siebert, though that could be in how they factor in commissions. Kiplinger’s doesn’t seem to care as much at Muriel Siebert is almost 3x as expensive as TradeKing.

Many of the scores confirmed the results found in Smart Money’s ranking, such as TradeKing scoring 5 out of 5 in customer service (pretty impressive considering their low $4.95 a trade commission). Smart Money’s winner, E*Trade, took fifth place in the Kiplinger’s listing of the best discount brokers.

It’s not that surprising that Zecco was listed so far back, they seem to have a problem shedding the negative aspects of “discount,” unlike other brokers, and continue to rate pretty poorly against their peers. I was surprised to see Scottrade dead last considering they rated rated the highest in investor satisfaction by JD Power & Associates but I suppose you have take all rankings with a grain of salt.

If you don’t have a copy of the magazine, Cap has a full listing of the scores.

Last week I wrote about a little preview to the SmartMoney 2008 Broker Survey in which SmartMoney released some preliminary results from their annual ranking of brokerage firms. SmartMoney has published the full details of their report and I’m sad to say that TradeKing did not retain the top spot they enjoyed the last two years (third place isn’t bad!).

Summary

SmartMoney changed the way they listed their rankings a little this year. Last year, they separated “discount” and “premium” brokers. Compare the tables from 2007 versus the tables from 2008, they went from three (premium, full-service, discount) to one (umm… everything).

Of the 2008 top 5 (they were, in order, E*Trade, Fidelity, TradeKing, TDAmeritrade, Charles Schwab), only TradeKing came from the 2007 Discount Brokers bracket and they took the third spot (so one could argue they are still reigning champs of the Discount Broker conference?), the rest came from premium brokers.

The Winner: E*Trade

E*Trade snagged the top spot this year with nearly five stars across the board. They also shared a nod for the best trading tools with TD Ameritrade and topped the list for best banking services (sharing that one with no other brokerage). When you can offer an interest rate of 3.25% on your holdings and not require thousands and thousands in the bank, it’s no surprise they were given the nod there. I personally enjoy using E*Trade for my stock trading because of this convenient link between the bank and brokerage.

Incidentally, in 2003’s rankings, E*Trade scored 9th in the “basic discount broker” category because of their $22.99 a trade commissions. It’s amazing what five years and “listening to feedback” can do for you.

The Top 5

Looking strictly at stars, not much separated the top five. While the criteria were not equally weighted, each one scored five stars in at least two categories and a minimum of three stars in each (in fact, only TD Ameritrade had two three-star categories, every other broker had only one).
Here were the concerns (and my comments) about the top five:

1. E*Trade: None listed, they are so perfect.
2. Fidelity: Commissions were on the high side, at $10.95, I agree. Though I don’t really consider Fidelity a discount broker (in 2007, they were considered “premium”).
3. TradeKing: Weaker fund selection, though they were noted for low commissions ($4.95 a trade).
4. TD Ameritrade: No negatives listed, though they only gained three stars in banking services. Their interest rate on cash of 0.1% was the lowest of all the sixteen listed brokers by far (second lowest was #9 Scottrade at 0.5%)
5. Charles Schwab: Is Schwab really a discount broker? Commissions run $12.95 a pop, hardly “discount” prices, but they had only three-stars in customer service.

TradeKing: 2007’s #1 Discount Broker

They probably got hosed this year by the rejiggering of categories (they had to update their little award picture!) since they were the only one of the top five to have come from last year’s discount category. Of the top ten, they were the second cheapest to Interactive Brokers (a firm I hadn’t heard of before this year’s survey) by a significant margin (after TradeKing, second cheapest was Firstrade at $6.95, a 40% difference). TradeKing did score a ribbon for best customer service and were the only firm to earn five stars in that category.

Zecco: 14th of 16th - Ouch!

What about #14 Zecco with their free trades? (they get a lot of blog press) They scored very weakly across the board for each of the five categories (one star in Trading Tools, Research, and Customer Service) though they received special citation for the worst customer service of the bunch. The $0 per trade offer is a compelling offer but if you’re looking for some hand holding, you won’t get it. Tou get what you pay for ($0). If you only need a broker to enter your trade into the market, Zecco is a good deal; if you’ll ever need to talk to someone about anything… you might as well slide up the commission price chain and go with someone like #6 Firstrade ($6.95 a trade) or #3 TradeKing ($4.95 a trade). You shouldn’t be trading so much that much anyway (though Sharebuilder, the epitomy of buy and hold, took dead last).

There you have it, another year, another brokerage survey from SmartMoney. If you’re looking for a bank and brokerage in one, I personally recommend E*Trade because they make it easy to link up the two (open up one account and you can open the other within minutes online), which can be a good or a bad thing.

Source: SmartMoney’s Annual Broker Survey [SmartMoney]

Smart Money reviews brokers every single year and they recently just gave a preview to their results. Rather than give the straight ranking, they discussed some headline categories (Commissions & Fees, Research, Trading Tools) and then listed the best and worst from each category.

For best commissions and fees, they listed Interactive Brokers, a brokerage firm I hadn’t heard of but does charge pretty rock bottom fees (half a cent per share on equity trades). They also showed the spread was anywhere from $4.95 for TradeKing to $112.50 for Fidelity on broker-executed trades.

For research, my Roth IRA brokerage, TD Ameritrade, took the top honors with Zecco and SoGoTrade splitting the worst place ribbon. One interesting point made was that J.D. Power’s research showed that good research trumps trade execution and customer service with regards to overall satisfaction. I found that pretty surprising since there is a wealth of free investing information out there but trade execution and customer service is where the rubber actually meets the road. If they can’t execute your trade or if you can’t get on the phone with someone in a few minutes, that’d be a deal breaker for me.

Last but not least, E*Trade and TD Ameritrade snatched the number one and one-a spot for trading tools with Sharebuilder playing caboose. It’s not surprising because Sharebuilder isn’t for the typical trader, it’s for people looking for an easy way to reinvest their dividends back into equities. TradeKing’s social networking area got a shout out as did Zecco and WellsTrade, but that was because they offered less than half the thirteen tools their researchers were looking for. Thirteen tools? Wow.

Anyway, check out the preview, I’m eagerly anticipating their results and whether TradeKing will need to update their current banner and call it a three-peat.

SmartMoney’s 2008 Broker Survey

Need to absolutely reach your brokerage right now? Here’s a handy resources of all the brokerages I am aware of, their phone numbers, hours of operation, and a link to the brokerage’s contact page. On that page you’ll usually find a Fax number, overnight mail address, regular mail address, email addresses, and sometimes even an online chat. In many cases, there are multiple telephone numbers listed, I chose the one for existing brokerage clients (if that’s not what you need, just hit up the link and you’ll find the whole list).

Did I miss your brokerage? Let me know and I’ll add their phone number.

I just received an email from Zecco that they’ve lowered their minimum balance from $2,500 to $0. I still haven’t opened the account (and provided a review) like I said I would, a bit busy lately with some other projects and haven’t had a chance to dig up the necessary documents, but I still plan on doing it. Those who want to trade on margin, a risky endeavor, will have to have a minimum balance of $2,000.

For comparative purposes, TradeKing requires no minimum balance, ETrade requires a minimum balance of $1k, TD Ameritrade requires a balance of $2k, and Charles Schwab requires a balance of $2.5k.

I’m not yet advocating you open a Zecco account, I haven’t myself, but their offering is getting more and more tempting.

Do you have a Roth IRA? If so, excellent job, you’ve already done one of the best things you could probably do to ensure you have a financially viable retirement. If not, why not? If your excuse isn’t, I make more than $110,000 and thus am not allowed to contribute, then your excuse is not good enough.

Don’t have enough time? It takes literally fifteen minutes. Do it while you’re watching American Idol or CSI: Saturn. Fifteen minutes. You spend more time getting dressed in the morning. Go to Vanguard, or Fidelity, or TD Ameritrade, or Etrade or your favorite brokerage firm. (I even linked to the Open Account page to save you a few seconds)

Don’t have enough money? Did you know that if you contributed $4,000 (max for 2006 and 2007) right now and it appreciated at a mere 7% for the next twenty years, you would have $15,478.74? While that doesn’t sound like a lot of money, 7% is a relatively conservative number for your investments. If you were to instead use 11%, you’d have $32,249.25. If you were to stretch the time out thirty years at 11%, you’re talking $91,569.19 - all from a single $4,000 contribution right now.

Now, ignoring all those crazy appreciation numbers, remember that you don’t have to contribute all $4,000. You can contribute $1,000 or $100, but you need to contribute something. (I’d argue that you want to contribute as much as you can to avoid low balance fees but $1,000 is better than $0)

Afraid you’ll need the money? Since your Roth contributions are after-tax contributions, you can withdraw those contributions whenever you want. Dire emergency and you have no choice but to raid the Roth? You can still do it. You can still change your mind.

Opening a Roth IRA is ridiculously easy and it’s not something to be afraid of. Don’t be afraid you don’t have enough money and instead challenge yourself to find a way to save a hundred bucks a month and at the end of the year you’ll have $1,200 saved away (worth $27,470.76 in thirty years at 11%) that you didn’t think you had. You have until April 16th to file your taxes this year so you have until April 16th to open up a Roth IRA and contribute to it for 2006. Go! Do it!

Thinking about investing in some securities? Well you’re going to need a brokerage account. While it’s hard to compare the qualitative differences between each brokerage, it’s easy to compare one of the big quantitative differences - fee schedules. So, below I’ll compare the fee schedules of each of the major brokerages in easy to understand language and hopefully it’ll make your decision just that much easier. In the discussion below, I only talk about online trades - no phone or in person (broker-assisted) transactions.

TradeKing - Two time winner (2007 and 2006) if Smart Money’s best discount brokerage award, TradeKing leads the pack with its $4.95/trade commission schedule. I have yet to hear any bad things about this brokerage.

TD Ameritrade - TD Waterhouse and Ameritrade recently combined to form TD Ameritrade and they lowered many of their fees. Market and limit orders are $9.99 regardless of your trading frequency. I use TD Ameritrade for my Roth IRA because they have the lowest fees of the brokerages I looked at (at the time).

ETrade - ETrade recently acquired BrownCo, which had $5 real time trades, and they have a tiered fee schedule. If you have less than $50k and trade fewer than 29 times a quarter, it’s $12.99 each. If you make over 1500 trades (wow), it’s only $6.99 each.

Vanguard - Known for the performance of their mutual funds, Vanguard has pretty hefty fees. An online trade costs a whopping $25, or 0.025 per share (whichever is greater). My Roth IRA used to be at Vanguard but I felt the interface was a little too dated (slow, clunky), they may have since improved it (they’ve overhauled their website). My SEP-IRA is here because I can invest in Vanguard funds.

Fidelity - Also known for their mutual funds, second only to perhaps Vanguard, Fidelity has $19.99 trades in a tiered schedule as well.

ShareBuilder - Sharebuilder is a little different than the other brokerage houses, the idea with them is that you’re constantly investing small amounts, dollar cost averaging, in various securities. It’s $4 if you schedule your purchases (always onto a Tuesday) and it’s $15.95 if you want real time trading (all sales are real time). Limit orders are $19.95. I would not recommend ShareBuilder for anything other than for a long term investment plan in which you want to dollar cost average your positions. Also, ShareBuilder has been known for having a lot of free money promotions (follow the link for an explanation on how they work and for promotional codes).

Did I leave out your favorite brokerage firm? Let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

This is a guest post authored by frugal at My1stMillionAt33.

Before I tell you about my terrible experience with Scottrade, let me first compare several online brokerage firms in terms of commission costs:

1. Ameritrade Izone: Best for active traders. $5 per trade, very cheap rate for option contract at $5 + $0.75 per contract.
2. Scottrade: Best for casual traders and/or investors. $7 per trade. $0 for loaded mutual fund, but $17 for most other non-loaded mutual funds. Option contract at $7 + $1.25 per contract. Has offering on CD & fixed income bonds. Can only do the following option trades: buying put/call, or sell covered call.
3. ETrade: More expensive compared to both Ameritrade Izone and Scottrade, unless trading more than 1500 trades per quarter.
4. Sharebuilder: Good for long term investor. $4 for automatic investment, and can be as low as $1. Selling is $12 to $20 depending on the plan. The biggest downside is that you give up the control on the market timing for your buy order. Instead you will do time-averaging through automatic investment.
5. BuyAndHold: Best for asset allocator and long term investor. I will recommend this to anyone who is currently using Sharebuilders. I like their $14.99 per month for unlimited number of “window” trades which get routed 3 times a day. With $120 $180 a year, you can buy and build 1000 stock portfolio if you want (just kidding, but it’s true). I don’t think you can beat this deal, especially after http://www.freetrade.com/ (under Ameritrade) is gone.
6. FirsTrade: Even better than Scottrade. I’m sure everyone has lamented the reduction in the NTF program for mutual funds at Scottrade. Well, if you use FirsTrade, you can get it back. Yes, ALL mutual fund trades are FREE. And the stock trades are 5 cents cheaper at $6.95. Their pricing model is essentially the same as the old Scottrade. But they don’t have any physical branches. If you want to open an account with 5 free trades, PLEASE send me (frugal) an email, and I will give you the referral code to get the free 5 trades.

Enough of cheap commissions, but if it is not reliable, it is pretty much useless. So back to my Scottrade bad experiences. My problems with them is that their internet servers are getting so unreliable, especially the first half hour right after the market opens, that it is no longer usable.

1. One time I tried to day trade a stock, and I almost got sacked by Scottrade. I placed limit order, and I was barely able to cancel and modify my entry price in time because their servers kept non-responding.
2. The second time, it was pretty much unforgiveable. I put in a limit order, and when I attempted to cancel the order, I simply cannot cancel it, even though it is still showing on my screen as open order. Somehow somewhere there is a server problem. Minutes later, my limit order became executable. I called up customer services, and they could not determine whether my order was filled or not. After an hour, my order got executed with a timestamp of an hour later. Scottrade claims that the timestamp is the reporting time, not the executed time, and my order was filled minutes later, instead of an hour later. Scottrade refused to correct anything, but simply blaimed everything on the delays of the market makers.
3. Yesterday, again, stupid me, I was doing trades near market open. I am so certain that I cancelled my order. But I had some problem with their server again in the morning. After a couple of hours, I finally found out that my “un-cancelled” order got executed. They claimed that I never cancelled the order. They really have a big problem with this process. At the end of cancellation screen, there is never a confirmation number given out. I can never write down any # to prove that I have attempted to cancel my order. So after a long talk of repeating the same information over and over, and an eventual non-callback, it appears again that they will not do anything to my phantom trade becoming real and losing significant money in such a big down day.

I know that FirsTrade has its problems, especially with market quotes right after market starts. But at least there is never a problem with non-responding servers that give you a page-not-found error. Probably because they are smaller company. In any case, I am moving majority if not all of my money out of Scottrade. I’m so fed up with their parrot-talking customer non-service. I was planning to move my tradings to Ameritrade Izone, but after reading some comments at Dogs of the Dow, I’m a little hesitating now. If you have recent positive experience with Ameritrade or any online brokerages besides Scottrade, would you please suggest them to me? I don’t really know where I could find a reasonable priced and reliable brokerage now. I plan to use FirsTrade for now. Since I never tried their streamer, maybe FirsTrade streamer will not have quoting problem. I can always use the other online brokerage accounts for quote too, so it won’t be such a problem.

Thanks in advance for your online brokerage suggestions to me. Cheap commission is not everything. Without reliability, all (stock) bets are off. I’m planning to take my complaints to NASD. By the way, I really miss the reliability offered by Datek, which was bought by Ameritrade. That was my first reason of moving to Ameritrade since I assume that the platform would be similarly reliable. And I hope you will find both FirsTrade and BuyAndHold useful.

Update: Ameritrade has officially terminated FreeTrade and turned it into TDAmeritrade Izone, but you can get $0 commission trades through Zecco and $4.95 trades through TradeKing

Is this legitimate or even possible? Freetrade claims to give you your first 20 trades (market, limit, stop, stop-limit, short sell, odd-lot and OTCBB) for free. Your next 80 trades are only $3, the 100 after that are only $2, and anything else is $1. Your first thought would be SCAM until you see “by Ameritrade (not TDAmeritrade)” right next to its name. The next cheapest brokerage house is BrownCo at $5 a pop. Still skeptical? So was I so I signed up.

How can they afford to do this? Well, you know how ING Direct is all virtual and so they can give you such good rates? Freetrade follows that philosophy and all your interaction with Freetrade will be entirely electronic. You won’t be able to call them up and ask a question, all correspondence will be via email. You won’t receive a paper statement and you can only place trades via the Internet or through the automated telephone system. You will not be able to talk to a human being. Again, if you’re not comfortable with that then I would strongly suggest you don’t use them.

I wanted to see how it worked so I signed up for a “Cash, Margin & Option” account. You’ll be required to fill out all sorts of personal information including your current profession, salary, and employer so have that information handy. The entire process took me only a few minutes and before I knew it I had directions on how to wire them money. Since it’s automated, I could either pay them $25 to initiate a wire transfer or simply do it myself (and pay my own bank fees) with their provided directions. After your initial wire, all other transfers can be ACH. There is a minimum account balance requirement of $5,000 for it to become and remain Freetrade” account, otherwise it considered an “Ameritrade” account with $10.99 trades!

The account itself is like most other brokerage accounts except you don’t have real time quotes (you can buy Ameritrade’s Screener for $9.99/month) and you don’t get access to any research. For me, that’s not important because my Roth IRA is held at TD Waterhouse (now TD Ameritrade) so I can use the research and RT quotes there (At nearly $18 a trade, I better). A few other niceties that you won’t are automatic dividend reinvestment and fractional share purchases, but that may not be significant for you.

Any hidden fees? There are a few that they don’t advertise (obviously, but hardly hidden) and that you should check out. Click on Account Services and then on the link for Fee Schedule and you should see them. Your first two incoming or outgoing wire transfers are free, otherwise they’re $25, and brokerage transfers are $25 inbound and $50 outbound.

I have yet to wire money into the account (I opened it yesterday) or enter any orders in but I will update this article as soon as I do and let you all know how it goes. Anyone any experience with Freetrade? For me, the Ameritrade name gives it legitimacy and I’m not too worried about it.