|
|
|
Merrill Lynch 2010 review: brand name brokerage house with highest commissions in the industry
|
Merrill Lynch Commissions and Investments
- Stock commissions: $29.95 for limit orders. $14 market orders
- Options commission: expensive with complicated structure
click here to see it
- Investment products: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, bills, notes, munis, CDs, corporate bonds, ETFs,
annuities
New MerrillLynch.com customer account management website has a very clean look, is very well designed and
easy to navigate. You could find what you are looking for within 2-3 clicks.
- Large, brand name company (bragging rights?)
- Many investment products
- Participation in IPOs, if you have 100K account balance. Not guaranteed
- Free checking account
- Free Visa debit card
- 600 offices nationwide
- Highest commissions of all stock brokers. $30 to buy a stock?
- Additional $0.03 per share for orders of over 1,000 shares
- $2,000 minimum to open account
- Account maintenance fee: $25/quarter (waived if 25K balance or make 2 trades in 6 months)
- Annual custodial fee of $50 for IRA and ROTH IRA accounts (waived if $20,000 in assets at Merrill Lynch)
- Mutual fund Short-Term redemption fee if held less than 180 days: $50-$250
- Optional Exchange Fee: $30. Mandatory Exchange Fee: $50
Merrill Lynch is one of the best known
online brokerage firms and is now owned by Banc Of America. Firm's clients are
mostly wealthy individuals and they pay dearly to have account with Merrill Lynch.
Merrill Lynch charges a lot of fees that most other discount stock brokers don't have. Trading commissions are
the highest we've seen. Even if you have millions of dollars and trade tens of thousands of shares,
we don't see a good reason to pay $30 or more in trading commissions if you could pay $3-$7
with other firms.
The old argument that Merrill Lynch is good for high net worth people who don't want to manage their own money
and let ML do it, doesn't stand anymore. If Merrill Lynch can't even manage their own money why would you
let them manage yours?
If you want a well established and known company with very good service to hold your investments why not go for
Scottrade
? If you don't want to manage your money, buy some index funds,
gold and other commodity ETFs, some bonds and forget about it. No financial advisor will beat
index fund performance over the long run.
If you want excellent customer service and $9.95 commissions, go for
optionsXpress
 .
|
|
|
|
|