Investment Firms and Fees

UDaviator

UDaviator

Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto
Curious to know what firm or company y'all use as an investment platform and what you think of them? As well as how active you are in the process....set it n forget it or active every week....AND what they charge. Of course if you are happy with them would be nice to know too :-)

TD Ameritrade....Vanguard....E*Trade....Fidelity....Edward Jones....etc.....
 
Vanguard for Roth and taxable and Fidelity for 401k.

Love vanguard just wish the trading fees were a bit lower but I'm 99% in their ETFs which are free.
 
UDaviator said:
Appears Betterment is one of the better out there....think I am leaning toward it
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It's a robo invester that takes fees for making an allocation for you. I think you really need to read up before you start putting your money somewhere.

I would suggest opening a Roth with Vanguard and putting your money in a 80% VTI 10% VGK and 10% BND until you know what you are doing.

Disclaimer: not giving you investment advice I do personally hold some shares of each and do some more research on investing.
 
Well the book you suggested showed up today....so will be tapping into that. I currently have a nice chunk sitting with Edward Jones, but am not a fan of how they operate...or maybe it is just who I ended up with.

I feel like a robo-invester wouldn't be a horrible idea? I'm in my twenties and looking for an aggressive option to transfer my current Roth into....
 
Here's some I've used along with type of the accounts I've held with them:

Scottrade (taxable brokerage)
Pros:
  • Very reasonably priced, at $7 per trade.
  • No account closing or inactivity fees
  • Fast trade execution
  • Decent analytics tools on their website
Cons:
  • They apparently use a time machine to travel back to the nineties and hire their product managers there. Want to withdraw money from your account? Please walk to the branch office that is open 10-4 weekdays only, make sure it's the one your account is "assigned" to, spend 45 minutes listening to the branch clerk trying to upsell you their other services, fill out a bunch of paperwork and wait for a check to show in mail in about a week. ACH transfers? Never heard of it. Virtually any operation requires either a trip to the branch or sending them a fax.
  • Oh and that clerk will keep calling your cellphone and continue upselling something and telling you how bad your other brokerage is.
  • Their mobile app is buggy, ugly, and useless.
This was my first brokerage account but I no longer use it because of the above nonsense.

Fidelity (Rollover IRA)
Pros:
  • Too big to fail
  • Have their own mutual funds and ETFs, some with no trading fees (but watch for potentially higher management fees)
Cons:
  • Website is hard to use
  • Slow trades execution
Charles Schwab (taxable brokerage)

I don't have much to say about them. Originally I wanted to transfer my Scottrade account to them but decided not to do so when learned about their security policies, specifically their maximum (yes maximum) password length is 8 characters. I still have couple accounts open with them but only for no fee ATM card.

Merril Lynch aka BofA (taxable brokerage)

Pros:
  • Too big to fail
  • If you hold balances high enough the trades are free, and there's plenty of other freebies, such as free cashiers checks, safety deposit box etc.
  • Website and app is decent
Cons:
  • It's BofA
  • Slowish trade execution
I ended up using them as my primary brokerage account.

Motif

This one is a bit unusual. I signed up when they announced access to IPOs for regular investors. There's been several IPOs since then and I'm still waiting to be invited. But even IPOs aside their service looks interesting. Basically they offer investing in several stocks for a single trade fee (currently $10 per trade) For example "Renewable energy companies" or "Companies that support democrats" etc. You can get one of the pre created bundles or build your own, trade fees are the same but you have to buy or sell the whole bunch. If you're going to sign up you can use me as referral and they give you and me $100 bonus: the referral link
 
I like TD Ameritrade / Thinkorswim. Really good software, trading fees are a bit on the higher side, but not terrible.

Interactive Brokers has much lower fees. Software is decent. The expose an API, so you can use pretty much any software you like. Higher account minimums.

E*trade is decent, I mostly use the brokerage account as a checking account though. They refund nearly any ATM fee.

My retirement accounts are all at Fidelity. Fees aren't awful, not great either. Don't have choice anyway with the 401k. No commissions on the Blackrock funds, some of which are decent (IVV S&P Index, for instance). Otherwise, live with the commission and buy Vanguard funds.
 
UDaviator said:
I currently have a nice chunk sitting with Edward Jones, but am not a fan of how they operate...or maybe it is just who I ended up with.
Click to expand...

Well, they make a living off of commissions, so they are going to try to sell you into funds with a sales load. So expect to pay 5% off the top, plus higher management fees. If you know enough to be buying index funds anyway, just use any of the decent discount brokers.
 
UDaviator said:
Curious to know what firm or company y'all use as an investment platform and what you think of them? As well as how active you are in the process....set it n forget it or active every week....AND what they charge. Of course if you are happy with them would be nice to know too :)

TD Ameritrade....Vanguard....E*Trade....Fidelity....Edward Jones....etc.....
Click to expand...

HIGHLY suggest you and everyone else watch this....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/retirement-gamble/
 
I work at Northwestern Mutual currently and love our products. I would highly recommend them even before I worked here. If you have any specific questions pm me.
 
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