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Compare OptionsXpress vs Sharebuilder
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- Stocks and ETFs: $9.95 if under 1001 shares; $0.01 per share if over 1000 shares
- Options (0-34 trades/quarter): $14.95 (for one contract), $14.95 (for five contracts), $15 (for 10 contracts), $30 (for 20 contracts)
- Options (35+ trades/quarter): $12.95 (for one contract), $12.95 (for five contracts), $12.95 (for 10 contracts), $20 (for 20 contracts)
- Mutual Funds: $14.95
- Investments: stocks, options, mutual funds, bonds, futures, ETFs
- Minimum to open account: $0 for cash account, $2000 for margin account
- All OptionXpress fees and margin rates
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- Automatic Investments: Basic plan - $4 per investment
- Standard plan - $12/month, you get 6 automatic investments and each additional is $2
- Advantage plan - $20/month, you get 20 automatic investments and each additional is $1
- Real-time stock and ETF trades: $9.99
- Options: Early Exercise - $30 per early exercise, no trade commission; Automatic Exercise -
$20 per automatic exercise, no trade commission
- Mutual funds: 70 free funds including the ING Mutual Funds. 170 no-load funds from leading no-load mutual fund families
- Investment products: stocks, options, mutual funds, ETFs
- Minimum to open account: $0
- All Sharebuilder fees and margin rates
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- Best customer service
- Many well-designed trading tools
- No hidden fees
- No fee IRA accounts
- Great research
- Free real-time and streaming quotes
- Free virtual trading
- $0 to open cash account
- Free account transfers
- Free instructor lead online classes
- Free broker-assisted trading
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- Very low Automatic Investing Plans costs
- Free dividend and capital gains reinvestment
- No account minimum
- No-fee IRA and ESA accounts
- No inactivity or maintenance fees
- Ability to buy fractions of a stock
- $0 to open cash account, $2,000 for margin account
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- High trading costs for stocks and options
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- Real-time trades at $9.95 are somewhat expensive
- You don't know at what price you are buying investments with Automatic Investing Plans
- Weak trading tools
- Slow executions
- Few mutual fund choices
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OptionsXpress or Sharebuilder: Comparison Summary
OptionsXpress
and
Sharebuilder
are very similarly priced for stocks and ETFs: $9.95 (at OptionsXpress for orders of under 1,001 shares).
ShareBuilder is the only brokerage firm offering cheap automatic investing plans. This is ideal for people that
don't believe that one could time the market or don't have time to follow it and are looking to dollar-cost-average their investments
by arranging to have a set amount invested daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly.
OptionsXpress is a brokerage with one of the best customer services, trading tools and research.
Sharebuilder is one of the worst in all these categories.
OptionsXpress also provides its customers with virtual trading and free instructor lead online classes.
Both companies have no IRA setup and annual fees, and no surcharges for penny stocks (stocks under $1).
They also don't charge annual IRA and IRA setup fees, and OptionsXpress is one of the
Best IRA Brokerages.
Out of these two brokerage firms, OptionsXpress is by far the better choice.
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