Re: Online broker

Tad Borek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> and Fidelity. That's assuming you need a broker at all - most
> beginning investors stick with mutual funds, and if you buy funds from
> say Vanguard, you don't have a brokerage account at all (you have an
> account with the fund company).

To further elaborate - if you have several funds with Vanguard,
_without_ an actual brokerage account, you can still swap
money between various Vanguard funds online, quickly and easily.

Now, I do think that Vanguard's web designers ought to be
fired.  The site is annoying as hell, popping up new windows
all the time for every little thing.  It was a lot nicer 
before a redesign they did a couple of years ago.  It took
them a while to get rid of some annoying javascript bugs, too.
But as annoying as I find it, it does work.

So if all you have are Vanguard funds, it's kind of no-brainer.

On the other hand, I've never heard anything good about their
brokerage services.

> If you want mutual funds that are available through brokerage firms,
> or if you want to trade stocks...well the reality is that the majors
> are very similar in cost and fund offerings and you might just pick
> based on the look/usability of the web site. People who trade a lot

And, as you said, I'd lean towards one of the biggies - Fidelity,
Schwab, etc.  Bear in mind that certain funds are not available,
and that their "no transaction fee" deals require you to be locked
into a fund for a minimum of 6 months (I think - it's several months,
anyway).  Recently, Schwab raised what they were charging the fund
companies themselves for inclusion in the NTF programs and several
funds revolted.

> Depending on where you live, you might consider an online broker that
> also has a local branch close by. Not that you will use it all that

I'll second that, too.  While I hardly ever actually have to do
so, I find it comforting to be able to walk across the street
from my office and deposit checks into my brokerage account.  And
I do actually do so about once every couple of months.  They even
have nice self-serve machines which take the check, scan it, and
print an image of it on the receipt.  Very slick.

> deposits, last-minute IRA contributions, odd forms that you can't get
> online, etc - it's nice to have a branch nearby. That might narrow it

Actually, I've found that more often than not, the walk-in office
tells me to go online to get forms.  Not the other way around.

> One thing someone else mentioned is paperwork...I think it's essential
> that the firm send you paper account statements and trade
> confirmations, even if you need to pay a little extra for it. This
> whole trend towards electronic statements is a terrible idea, and I
> think it's going to lead to a lot of missing records years from now.

Agreed on all points.



-- 
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks.  The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! --    http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
   http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting