Merrill Lynch Review: Commissions, Fees, and Minimum Deposit
| Product | Price |
|---|
| Stocks and ETFs | $29.95 for limit orders; $14 market orders |
| Investments | stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, bills, notes, munis, CDs, corporate bonds, ETFs,
annuities |
| Merrill Lynch minimum deposit to open account | $2,000 |
| Fees | Merrill Lynch fees |
The new Merrill Lynch customer account management website has a very clean look, and is very well designed and
easy to navigate. You can almost always find what you are looking for with two to three clicks.
Merrill Lynch Pros
- Many investment products
- Participation in IPOs, if you have 100K account balance (not guaranteed)
- Free checking account
- Free Visa debit card
- 600 offices nationwide
Merrill Lynch Cons
- Highest commissions of all stock brokers
- Additional $0.03 per share for orders of over 1,000 shares
- Account maintenance fee: $25 per quarter (waived for a $25,000 balance or two trades in six months)
- Annual custodial fee of $50 for IRA and Roth IRA accounts (waived for $20,000 in assets at Merrill Lynch)
- Mutual fund short-term redemption fee for funds held less than 180 days: $50-$250
- Optional Exchange Fee: $30. Mandatory Exchange Fee: $50
Merrill Lynch Review 2013 Summary
Merrill Lynch (ML) is one of the best known online brokerage firms and is now owned by Bank of America. The firm's clients are
mostly wealthy individuals, and they pay accordingly to have an account with ML.
Merrill Lynch charges a lot of fees that most other discount stock brokers don't. Trading commissions are
the highest of all brokerage firms. Even for someone who has millions of dollars and trades tens of thousands of shares,
we don't see a good reason to pay $30 or more in trading commissions when other brokerage houses charge $3-$7
for the same trades. (People don’t usually get wealthy by wasting money unnecessarily, right?)
The old argument that Merrill Lynch is good for high net worth people who don't want to manage their own money
and would rather let Merrill Lynch do it for them, doesn't stand anymore. If Merrill Lynch can't even manage its own money,
why would you let them manage yours?
We can't recommend Merrill Lynch. There are many other
Brokerage Houses that offer safe,
reliable services at a fraction of the cost of ML.
None right now.
Merrill Lynch
Reviewed by Brokerage Review on
.
Rating: 3
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