Do I need to say anymore?
I posted about Zecco.com a few months ago in this post. Apparently they lowered their minimum balance from $2500 to $0 since I last posted about them.
What is the catch? For most people there isn’t one. They give you up to 10 free stock trades a day or 40 per month. Anything over that is $3.50 per trade (which is still a steal). I found out that they make the majority of their revenue from options trading and interest on uninvested balances.
I just opened an account with them and I am still in the process of transferring my stocks over. I will post if I have any negative issues with them.
UPDATED: 2-3-2009…
I just got recently got an email from Zecco announcing that they are doing away with free stock trades for accounts with less than $25,000. This is a bummer, but I always wondered how they could afford to pull off an offer like that. Apparently, with the economic challenges they weren’t able to.
How to qualify for free trades at Zecco
According to the email I received there are still two ways you can get free stock trades…
1. Keep $25,000 in net assets in your account. This doesn’t have to be cash — it can be stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, or other assets.
OR
2. Make 25 total trades in a calendar month. These can be stock, ETF, or options trades. And yes, free trades count.
Other options for cheap stock trades
Zecco
Well, even though they aren’t free any longer for the smaller investors, Zecco.com still offers trades for $4.50, which is a pretty good deal.
Sharebuilder
I have written about my Sharebuilder experience, since they were the first online broker that I opened an account with. Sharebuilder allows you to buy stocks for $4.00 but they are not real-time trades (they are batched every Tuesday) and selling stocks costs about $10. That brings you to a total of about $14 which is a little higher than the $9.00 total at Zecco now.
That said, one of the things that makes ShareBuilder great for beginner investors is that they allow you to buy fractional shares. So you can get started investing for as little as $100.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I see you fixed the sidebar. It works now! God bless brother. Keep up the good work!
Lance
I got that e-mail as well. Zecco is pushing hard to make a dent in the low cost brokerage market.
I thought about moving my stocks over from TradeKing, but just finished transferring from ShareBuilder so I opened a brand new account instead.
Now I can gamble a bit more on the speculative stocks without feeling the commission eat up my gains. It’s very weird to trade/invest w/o the burden of commissions.
Are we witnessing an industry trend?
yea, that is the great thing about free trades – it really boosts potential profits for smaller investors. I am also looking forward to seeing what happens now that stock trades have become commodities.