I'm thinking about dipping my toes into the world of investing with an on-line brokerage firm. My friend uses Scottrade and he said they are pretty good. I was going to sign up for an account tonight, but two things stopped me.
The first was I saw in the fine print that they do a hard pull on your credit reports. I don't like that. Also, for trading penny stocks they charge the 7.99 trade fee plus 0.5% principle.
TDAmeritrade charges 9.99 per trade but they don't charge any additional fees for trading penny stocks. But it doesn't look like they do a hard credit pull.
The other thing is the amount to open an account; Scot will allow you to open one with 500 and it looks like TD requires 2000 to get started.
Do any of you guys use these sites?
Which one would you recommend?
Do any of you trade penny stocks?
What about the larger stocks?
Any recommendations on stocks?
I started thinking about this after reading about how FORD was at 1.70 per share territory before January 2009 and peaked at 8.01 a few months ago. A nice chunk of change could have been made by simply investing a grand in them.
Washington Mutual is sitting at 0.19 per share right now. I have been reading about them possibly jumping up pretty high depending on what happens in court with JP Morgan Chase. Some people are speculating that they could reach the 8.00 per share range if a favorable judgment is handed down.
Would WaMu be worth a $500 investment?
One of my friends does penny stocks and pretty much payed for his entire trip to Vegas with it in a 4 month span this past spring/summer. I've been meaning to look into it myself but have been too busy with work/school/life to take the time.
I've used both, and they both work fine (I've since switched to simple mutual fund stuff). I suppose the reason that Scott balks at penny stocks is the volatility. I think they also require a margin account for certain things, which explains the credit check. I don't remember the credit check, though...but that was a few years ago.