I'm young, still in school, and have just become interested in personal finances over the past year or so. I work full time on top of school and have been saving money and trying to invest as well. I have both an online savings and an Electric Orange account with ING and have been making small purchases in various ETFs over at Sharebuilder. I was basically attracted to Sharebuilder since I would be contributing small amounts at a time and didn't want the extra money that wouldn't cover a complete share to go to waste...not only that, but I basically had no money to go toward a minimum balance and have been usually buying in $200 chunks. I've been pretty happy with them so far, but know that I'll eventually out-grow them as a broker and wondered which ones you GRS guys would recommend?

From reading around and looking at other reviews, it seems like a natural progression for me would be Sharebuilder -> Scottrade -> Fidelity, on a long-term scale...or something like that. I do like ETFs in general, and imagine I'll be sticking with them for a lot of my investment needs. In case anybody is curious, my asset allocation looks something like this right now (although I've been holding off on the REITs for a bit until I see how the housing market plays out in the near future):



Any thoughts/reviews/recommendations as far as brokers go?

If you (or your spouse, or parents...) are military, USAA is an all-around great financial center. I could talk about any number of things that they offer which are terrific, but I'll opt to stay on topic.

I switched to them from E*Trade a few months back as part of a larger effort to consolidate my stuff, and I am glad I did. I currently pay $8 for trades (and will pay less in the future now that I've switched to electronic docs) and they pretty much cover everything I need.

The only issue I have with it is that my portfolio view isn't calculated real-time, i.e., when I view it, it doesn't show the current exact value (or even delayed), but rather the value from the last business day's closing. This isn't such a concern to me, though, really, I don't day-trade, and I can get a real-time stock quote if I really need.


Here's a good article mentioning USAA, but more importantly, makes recommendations as to what you should look for in a brokerage.

http://www.forbes.com/2007/03/27/broker ... s_inl.html

You can get a free, independent report that profiles 12 popular online brokerages at http://www.brokeradviser.com/

I really like FOLIOfn http://www.foliofn.com for ETF investing, it's not included in the report but has similar features to Sharebuilder. It's not for everyone, but I think it makes maintaining you investment portfolio incredibly simple. The cost may be more or less than Sharebuilder depending on the number of monthly purchases and how often you rebalance. If you have more than one account, FOLIOfn becomes a real bargain.

I've also heard good things about zecco.com, also not included in the report, for buying ETF's with no commission, but I have no first hand experience with them.

Aside from strictly ETF-centric brokers, who do you guys use/like, and why?

Wells Fargo -- 100 free trades per year per account type w/ combined balance of 25K+.

I went sharebuilder, because as a Costco Executive member, I get a 25% rebate on montly fees every quarter. Also, because I can purchase stocks monthly for $4. Granted, to sell it is closer to $15, but I usually buy and hold.

What about for those of us who have less than 25K to invest right now...?

~Jamie

For taxable accounts, Zecco gives you 40 free trades per month with no fees. IRAs, Roth IRAs are $40 annual. The only question is how long Zecco can continue to offer free trades. But take advantage of it while you can and build up your balance to aim for WF 25K.

Scottrade is OK. Don't keep any cash in the account though as their interest rate is beyond awful. Every time I think about ditching Scottrade they do something that improves the service. Sort of like how ING did with Electric Orange. I was ready to go and then...Boom they launched a reason to stay.