club_cafe: Brokerage Accounts

Mostek, Juan on

We are using Harris Direct and have no issues.

Online brokers used to experience 'down time' or crashes back in 1998-1999. Some alleged savvy traders used to tout the two and three brokerage accounts as a way to conduct 24/7 trading.

I am trying to find out if that breed is still in existence - or if they have all retired down to the Bahamas with their dot.com profits. But I expect most have gone back to their 9-5 jobs and wish they have never heard on an online broker.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

-----Original Message-----
From: IraS1@aol.com [mailto:IraS1@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 8:11 AM
To: club_cafe@bivio.com
Subject: Re: club_cafe: Brokerage Accounts

Barbara,

I can't think of a good reason to maintain two accounts for a small club. As you stated, you will be paying inactivity fees to TDWaterhouse, in addition to any trading fees/commissions at Ameritrade. If you have any problems at Ameritrade, you won't be able to instantaneously "switch back" to TDWaterhouse. You'll still have to move your cash/securities. If I recall correctly, Ameritrade does not pay interest on cash balances below a fairly high threshold. Maintaining two accounts just makes it that much harder to have your funds working for you at all times. Finally, maintaining two accounts makes it at least twice as difficult to keep your financial records straight.

Ira Smilovitz

In a message dated 11/26/02 7:42:43 AM Eastern Standard Time, baburgess7@bivio.com writes:

How many of you are maintaining two brokerage accounts?
Please share your reason(s) for maintaining two brokerage
accounts.

We are in the process of leaving TD Waterhouse because of
excessive fees and high commissions. One of our partners
would like to keep them as a back up primairly because they
are local. Also, he feels we need a backup in case of
technical problems with our new broker - Ameritrade.

I think I am going to strongly suggest we do not keep
Waterhouse because of the inactivty fee. In order to avoid
the inactivity fee we must have at lest $10,000 in
securities/Cash or have three trades every six months.

Thanks,

Barbara, Treasurer
MET Club

Elizabeth Sorbet on

Well, we have two accounts.

One at Scottrade (great organization!). They have a local
office in the Atlanta area, their fees are reasonable, they
pay interest on our cash balances, and their customer
service is very, very good.

We also have an account at Buy and Hold. All stocks in the
buy and hold portfolio were purchased primarily for their
dividend yield. We put a small portion (a 6th) of our
monthly dues into that account, and purchase one of our 4
stocks on a rotating basis.

Buy and Hold automatically reinvests the dividends without a
fee. They do charge a 6.99 monthly maintenance fee, which
covers our first two trades also.

Mail