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ShareBuilder Review
ING Direct ShareBuilder - low cost automatic investment plans, pros and cons; ShareBuilder promotional code 2012
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ShareBuilder Review 2012: Commissions, Fees and Investments
- Stocks and ETFs Basic plan: $9.95 real-time trades; $4 per Automatic Investment
- Stocks and ETFs Advantage plan: $7.95 real-time trades; first 12 Automatic Investment per month included, $1 per additional investment
- Advantage plan comes with $12 monthly fee
- Options: Basic plan - $9.95 per online trade + $1.25 per contract; Advantage plan - $7.95 per online trade + $0.75 per contract
- Mutual funds: $19.95 for 170 no-load funds from leading no-load mutual fund families; 70 free funds including the ING mutual funds
- Investment products: stocks, options, mutual funds, ETFs
- Minimum to open Sharebuilder account: $0
- All Sharebuilder fees
ShareBuilder is one of the few online stock brokers offering automatic
investment plans. These plans might be beneficial to those investors who choose to accumulate core positions
over time (cost-average investments).
ShareBuilder new account opening process is one of the easiest and fastest we experienced. The forms are very well designed, with attention
to detail and they took less then 10 minutes to complete. At some point during application, the company will try to get you to subscribe to
automatic investment plan (Advantage Plan) - there is a small link on the bottom left corner if you don't want to participate.
ShareBuilder offers some of the best options for uninvested cash:
- FDIC Insured Cash Balance: 0.50% Annual Percentage Yield
- Money Market Fund: 0.02% 7-day yield
There is no minimum initial deposit requirement, so investors could quickly open account and check if they like what ShareBuilder
has to offer before committing money. If one choses to deposit money - they become available for trading the next business day.
Customers could conveniently fund newly opened brokerage account electronically from their checking account or they could open
high interest banking account from the Sharebuilder's parent company
ING Direct (ING checking account - 0.95% APY,
ING savings account - 0.85% APY).
ShareBuilder Website (ShareBuilder.com)/Trading Tools Review
ShareBuilder's trading tools are easy to use but rudimentary. They get job done in simple cases but the firm should
invest more into developing more sophisticated trading platform. One feature that we liked, are email trade confirmations that get sent
right away, not the next day like with many other brokers.
ShareBuilder Pros
- Very low Automatic Investing Plans costs
- Free dividend and capital gains reinvestment
- Ability to buy fractions of a stock
- $0 to open cash account, $2,000 for margin account
ShareBuilder Cons
- Real-time trades at $9.95 are expensive
- $0.007 per share surcharge on real-time trades on penny stocks (subject to a maximum of 15% of the principal amount of the trade, but no less than the base commission)
- Customers can't specify at what price investments with Automatic Investing Plans are bought/sold
- Very basic trading tools
- Customer service complaints
- Terrible executions
- Few mutual fund choices
- No beneficiary option (important for customers with families)
ShareBuilder Review Summary
ShareBuilder, which is owned by banking giant ING, is known for its automatic investing plans,
which allow investors to take advantage of dollar-cost-averaging by arranging to have a set amount invested daily,
weekly, biweekly or monthly. It also offers a rare feature of buying fractional shares, which could be beneficial
to those investors looking to invest in very high-priced stocks, like Berkshire Hathaway.
ShareBuilder does not have minimum balance requirements, inactivity or maintenance fees, unless one subscribes to
the monthly-fee automatic investing plan. Investors could open cash account with $0 down.
To execute a regular stock trade, a customer will have to pay a steep $9.99 commission. Coupled with sub-par trading tools and slow
executions, it makes Sharebuilder a terrible choice for real-time trading.
ShareBuilder was rated to have the worst in customer service in Smart Money magazine 2011 stock broker survey: it takes days for
the company to answer client emails. It was also rated the worst in Research, and Mutual Funds & Investment Products categories.
ShareBuilder does not have IRA setup and annual IRA fees. But the firm did not make it into our
Best IRA Stock Brokers list.
There are better brokerage firms for beginner investors than ShareBuilder, that offer vibrant online communities where users
could ask questions, learn from more experienced traders and even get investment ideas. Check out
our Best for Beginner Investor Brokers recommendations.
If you are looking to invest money automatically or dollar-cost-average your investments, then ShareBuilder is not the worst
choice. For everybody else there are better companies. Make sure to check out
Brokerage Reviews and Ratings.
Use link below to open new account with at least $50 to receive $50 credit (promo code 50wsb4).
ING Direct Checking reference code 2012
ING Direct Savings reference code 2012
ING Direct kids savings reference code 2012
ShareBuilder
Reviewed by Brokerage Review on
.
Rating: 3.5
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