eOption Review: Commissions, Fees and Investment Products
- Stocks and ETFs: $3
- Options: $3 ticket charge plus $0.10 per contract
- Option Exercise and Assignment: $9
- Foreign Stocks: $39 (must be placed with a broker)
- Extended Hours Trading: $25 for up to 5,000 shares, $0.003 per share for over 5,000 shares
- Mutual funds: $14.95
- Listed Bonds: first 25 bonds - $5 per bond, each additional bond - $3 per bond, minimum - $39
- Investment products: stocks, options, mutual funds, bonds, foreign stocks, ETFs
- Minimum to open eOption account: $0 for US; $5,000 for intenational accounts
- All eOption fees
New account application for individual/joint and IRA accounts takes 15-20 minutes to complete. The forms have more questions and screens than with
other brokers. We don't remember seeing questions like "What's your tax rate?" or "Banking references" at other firms.
You will be offered 6 money sweep options for your cash, some of which are California Daily Tax-Free Income Fund and Daily Income Fund U.S. Government
Portfolio, Retail Class. The names look good but seeing the summary of their rates and fees would be very helpful.
At the end the complete form is displayed in tiny window for a final review and it's very hard to read. eOption utilizes electronic signature, so there
is no need to mail the application. Shortly after application is complete, you'll get 2 emails: one is with account number which will be your user name
and impossible to remember. The other - with convoluted initial password. After a bunch of frustrating attemts to login we had to contact customer
service for help. Their reply was that there is replication gap - it would be nice to let users know that upfront. In about 2 hours we were able to
login to the website.
While other brokerage firms combine new account setup with funding setup, eOption decided to hide funding setup from the customers. After going
through the whole menu looking for ACH setup screen, we finaly found some information in FAQ page. Turns out that in order to utilize ACH, you must
complete and mail an Authorization for Electronic Transfer form, including a voided check or bank letter. From receipt of your ACH authorization,
activation may take up to 10 business days.
The home page of eOption looks fine. But after login into eOption.com website, it looks the least professional of all brokers we reviewed.
Design is crude, unprofessional: there are missing spaces between words (even between last and first name!), and between words and numbers;
odd dates and huge empty spaces on the pages. Login screen doesn't have a must-have link "Forgot your user name/password?" and it looks
half-finished. All this doesn't inspire confidence with a company.
eOption Pros
- Very low commissions
- Great margin rates
- Dividend reinvestment plan
- No IRA fees
eOption Cons
- Very expensive extended hours trading commissions
- Limited trading tools and charts
- Limited research
- Slow and painful ACH setup process
eOption Review Summary
eOption is a discount online brokerage firm with some of the lowest commissions in the industry. Stock and ETF trades are just $3 per trade.
Unfortunately, extended hours trades are extremely expensive and start at the hefty $25 per trade, which is a deal-breaker for many investors.
As the name suggests, eOption's primary focus is on options traders. Options commissions are some of the best ($3 ticket charge plus
$0.10 per contract) and simple options trading is well done. But there are some issues that need to be worked out with complex options
trading.
New account setup takes a while and often
involves calling customer service representative. If you are like most other investors, want to transfer money through ACH, you will have to mail
form and wait for up to 10 business days for activation of ACH. Prospective clients will need a lot of patience before they could start trading.
eOption has no account maintenance, inactivity or trading volume fees. Live streaming quotes free. Their web-based platform is free.
Third-party trading platforms have additional fee.
Low commissions come at the cost - eOption functionality needs to be upgraded and is updated infrequently. Customer service also needs
improvement.
We recommend eOption for options traders. For everybody else, especially
Beginners and
Active Traders there are better online brokerage
companies that will offer them more value.
eOption
Reviewed by Brokerage Review on
.
Rating: 3
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