Investment accounts//Scott Trade? Who for low fees etc?
 

Let's hear it guys.

Who's got your money and why?

I'm not talking big money here, but I sure would like to avoid companies with unnnecessary fees (or higher than competitve fees).

UBS- was our family broker, and I started using the same guy. Personal service, and consistently good advice. I am woefully ignorant of the fees, but I haven't seen anything unreasonable, and I don't buy/sell much other than Mutual Funds which are through American funds.

Fidelity for stocks & some funds; Vanguard for funds

always use a discount broker for stocks & never get your advice from anyone with a conflict of interest

Most American Funds rate pretty well (Morningstar) but they are definitely not no-load funds. Initial sales charge is usually 5.25% depending on the amounts involved.

RWebb's advice is solid...

I should disclose, I have a Vanguard account for funds, but no stocks with them. Will be moving stocks from an account (at Merril Lynch) soon. Want to know where best to move it. If Vanguard is a good place (with competitive fees) then that may be where the stocks go.

Just wanted to know what is out there to make a good decision.

Thanks in advance.

I use Scottrade. I did some research a few years back and they offered the best service for the best price. Things culd have changed since then.

Souk why ya moving out of Merryll lynch? I just started with them.

Randy- Vanguard has $7 trades (25/yr, then $20 after). Seems competitive with Fedelity and Scott Trade. How come you're not using Vanguard brokerage services?


Tom - their fees are higher than some of the others.

Saw American Funds and Vanguard mentioned and thought I'd throw this out there from Barron’s 2011 Top Mutual Fund Families Rankings.

Ten-year performance Top 10:

1. American Funds
2. Franklin Templeton
3. Mainstay Funds
4. PIMCO/Allianz
5. Ivy Investment Management
6. T Rowe Price
7. Principal Management
8. Pioneer Investment Management
9. JP Morgan
10. Fidelity


I know people like Vanguard because they are "cheap" and don't like load funds because they are "expensive" but sometimes I wonder if people focus to much on the fees and forget about the performance. Sometimes you do get what you paid for.

partly just past history - also I keep about equal amounts in each place - might be safer

Fidelity charges to me are low; maybe $15 per trade so the incentive to move is small, tho I rarely trade much (I'd be happy to hold a stock for 30 years - in fact have had MSFT about that long tho I've sold a lot of it along the way)

not sure what all is included in those rankings - Vanguard has many actively managed funds for example.

The trick is whether you can pick (or pay someone not much money to pick) the funds...

I pay a small amt. to have professionals pick the funds with the best management, and I do use active funds mostly, not indexes.

The huge hit on expenses is with bond funds - you are not making that much anyway and the mgmt. fees will eat you alive there. In contrast, a reasonable mgmt. fee seems valid for a foreign stock fund where you really need some expertise to reduce risk, and where the returns should be higher.

I started out buying individual stocks when I hit the slaray big time with my post-doc (as a grad. student I made $7,000/yr and that went way up to $18,000/yr as a post-doc (or visiting ass. prof., as it was a bit more cheese than most of the post docs there got) - I didn't really care about spending money (except to fly to visit a gf & to go on my idea of a big vacation - backpacking & mtn. travel) so I stuck the "left over" $$ into equities.

The last para. is to emphasize that living cheap means you can accumulate bucks. And that is a very valuable investment tip.

Things like doing your own work on your German sports car can be fun and save $$...

oh yeh - I hat Merryl-Grinch. I used them for brokerage intially and they ripped me off. Only $90 but I was very pissed.

As Woody Guthrie once said:

"some will rob you with a six gun
others with a fountain pen."

Dropped UBS after 22 years. My broker recommended Home Depot in '87 before I ever heard of HD. Did REALLY good, but had all our eggs in one basket and Nardelli ran the company and the stock to almost nothing. As the broker got older, we got less and less advice....good or bad. Moved everything last year to Morgan Stanley and have grown over 20% since switching. It's really more about the broker than the brokerage.