OK, all of you who are passionate about your On-Line Brokerage IRA Vendor, this is your chance to shine!
I currently have Wells-Fargo, as my prior Strong Funds vendor was purchased by the aforementioned Well-Behemoth.
Before, I had investment advice on the phone, in chat sessions, and had a nice suite of research tools to choose from.
Now, I get “not much”.
My situation…I have a portfolio that’s about 60% stock and 40% mutual fund. I’m fairly aggressive, so I like to have research to back up my financial flailings. I also like live people off of whom I can bounce ideas (infrequently).
I’d like to see a fairly large selection of no-loads, no-fees, and an open (non-proprietary fund) selection. I’m guessing that’s part of the definition of “brokerage account”, but I’m unsure. I don’t buy and trade too often, so commission isn’t a huge deal (under $15 is preferable, of course).
Okay, I’ll go first. I have an opinion on IRA brokerage accounts, but not an opinion about which is the best vendor. I suggest a fee-only (non-commission) invesment advisor, instead. Statistically, amateur investors have way worse returns than professionals – usually for want of discipline instead instead of want of knowledge/information, though the various lacks can work together…to the detriment of the investor. Disclosure: This is not my field, directly, but my husband is an executive for a company that specializes in socially responsible investing options. It’s kind of like if his company were the wholesaler of the service, and the investment advisor/CFP were the retailer. Whether socially responsible or not, I believe the cost of fee-only service runs somewhere in the 1-3% per year range…which ought, statistically be more than offset by the better returns that come from professional management. If not, change managers.
I’ve set up Roths and IRAs there, and regular personal accounts.
I’ve funded IRAs through electronic transfers from my bank, and from direct transfers from other institutions.
Note: if you hold an IRA at, say, Fidelity or Janus, you want them to do a “Direct Transfer” to Ameritrade, not a rollover. I’ve done this TWICE recently. Janus (or whoever) just writes them a check I never see.
Also, when my profit sharing vests this year, I’m moving that to Ameritrade, but that’s done through a rollover (profit sharing writes them a check but gives it to me and I have to mail it to them). I just want to have all my stuff in one place.
Ameritrade allows you to “link” all your accounts together so you can see all of your balances on one page. That’s kind of nice.
You can’t buy all funds from all families at Ameritrade but you can buy a lot. There’s never been anything I wanted to buy that they didn’t have. You can set up recurring transfers, automatic dividend reinvestment, etc. etc. etc.
They’re not good for buying bonds. You want ustreas.gov or something else for that, but you can buy bond funds.
Some fund trades are like $18, but normal purchases of stocks is $11.
We have our accounts (Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, kids’ UTMA accounts) at Fidelity. They do have an open selection - as in, you can buy pretty much anything you want, not just Fidelity funds; my husband and I each have some non-Fidelity funds in our Roth accounts. We can see all our stuff on a single page, as Trunk mentions with Ameritrade.
They do offer professional management for a fee, though we haven’t taken advantage of that particular service. Their research tools are also pretty good.
I’ve heard some good things about Fidelity, but I’m concerned with differing information on per-trade commissions. One friend tells me it’s $10.95, and the other tells me it’s $19.95 (and the person with more$$ has the higher commission).
Trunk, would you characterize Ameritrade ashaving fairly good research tools? Can you get analyst recommendations ona per-fund and per-stock basis?
I don’t think there was a commission when we bought the non-Fidelity mutual funds for our IRAs. As for commissions on individual stock purchases: That is based on your total money on deposit with Fidelity (including all your accounts) however it’s lower if you have more money in their accounts. The gazillionaires pay only 8 dollars per trade, the middle-of-the-road folks pay 10.95, and everyone else pays 19.95. Not sure what the “.75 per contract” is, the handful of times we’ve made straight stock purchases we weren’t charged that, just the 10.95. https://scs.fidelity.com/customeronly/commissionlevel.shtml
I don’t know if I’d characterize Ameritrade as having good research tools. I think that Yahoo has almost every thing most people would want and has about as much as I’ve ever found at Ameritrade.
Beyond that, Morningstar has a lot of great tools. I don’t really use Ameritrade for research. I mostly have “set it and forget it” investments anyway. I’m not an active trader.
Mama Zappa – the $.75 per contract sounds like a price quote for buying options.
This might be shocking, but sometimes it takes more than an hour to receive a reply to one’s question. Try to be just a little patient.
Anyhow, I’ve got my IRA money at Vanguard, less for the research but more for the low-cost lifestyle funds, where the allocation between stocks and bonds is made based on the number of years until retirement, and they adjust the percentages as retirement gets closer. Previously, I had the money at Schwab, which also has good research tools.