More on Trading

After a month of researching information on complaints and exploring the websites of TradeKing, OptionsXpress, and Scottrade, I ended up settling for Scottrade and have execute my first trade orders as of this evening.

I did find it a very slow, and sometimes frustrating process, to sign up with Scottrade. The first issue was their website isn't too fond of Mozilla Firefox, so I had to drop into Internet Explore to finish the signing up on my account. I had to call the 800 number to figure out this is what the issue was. The good news was, I got a human right away, and one that spoke English, and was intelligent enough to figure out what was wrong in less than 5 minutes.

My second glitch with Scottrade was needing proof of my physical address. When you live in the sticks (being among the trees of the forest)  like I do, you don't receive mail to your house.  Like everyone else in my small town, we all have PO Boxes for mail. Well, due to the Patriot Act you must prove your physical address. That took a bit of time and scanning, especially when someone at Scottrade neglected to tell me the proof need to be less than three months old.

All said and done, I'm on Scottrade now. The real plus is every time I've had to call, I get someone really nice on the phone who is skilled at resolving frustration or calming ruffled feathers. At this point, my experience has been they have great customer service and you don't have to sit through a computerized system to reach a human being, even when it is after 8 p.m. at night.

Now, perhaps, I can settle back into some novel writing.

On-line trading: OptionsXpress, TradeKing, and Scottrade

My journey through the land of learning about on-line trade and stocks is continuing.  I must admit, at this time, I'm not getting much writing accomplished.  I am expanding my brain cells though.

What I've learned so far is that I really like the Virtual Trading on OptionsXpress and it is teaching me a lot. I was pretty much ready to commit to them as my on-line broker, when I started mentioning to people they are a branch of Charles Schwab. That led to a rant from my mother of how they cost her money many years ago in a land branch. Another friend then confirmed their reputation. I went on-line, and what one finds is enough to scare one completely off of trading.  Of course, all the on-line companies had lots of customer complaints.

So, then I started digging into TradeKing further. I really don't like the way their website looks. I wasn't really able to check out anything without completely signing up for an account. Even then I was locked out of many places since I hadn't deposited any funds yet. Then I found out they charge a $50 fee if you don't do anything with the account in a year. Since my plan is to buy stocks and sit on them until retirement (or they go way up and it would be crazy not to sell), I don't see myself necessarily buying or selling stocks every single year. They also had many complaints on-line. The most attractive fact about TradeKing was they only charge $4.99 a buy or sell.

Thus I started looking over Scottrade. I did have some trouble setting up the account, but even late a night I was able to get someone at the company on the phone that determined the issue was in the browser I was on and that changing browsers fixed the issue. The site looked more pleasing than TradeKing. I liked the fact that when I signed up they gave me an actual account number.  Neither of the others did so.

When I arrived home today, I had a phone message from an employee at Scottrade offering services if I needed any help or had any questions. Not only did she leave a phone number, but a first and last name. That made me feel valued, and that I would easily be able to get help if I needed it.

Scottrade charges a $7 a trade. The only real drawback I've found so far is you need to start with a deposit of $500. OptionsXpress and TradeKing don't have a minimum deposit to start.

That's my appraisal of three of the on-line trading websites. I didn't look at some of the others because they charge monthly or annual fees or require huge sums of money to begin with.  My plan is to buy $100-$200 of stock a month and slowly build up a portfolio.  After all, I'm in the working class, and that's all my budget can afford.