Comments on: ShareBuilder Review – Online Brokerage for Long Term Investors

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:00:48 +0000

rmorris, I have had nothing but excellent experiences with TradeKing, which you can read about in this TradeKing Review. Individual trades are cheaper and there are more investing tools available at TradeKing. They also reimburse new customers up to $150 to transfer their funds to their company. TradeKing was rated #1 discount brokerage overall two years in a row by SmartMoney, a financial magazine from the Wall Street Journal. I encourage you to check them out.

By: rmorris43

rmorris43 — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:49:21 +0000

I had a bad experience where they took 14 minutes to process a transaction. I did not have a lot of shares, so the money factor was not a big deal. (It went up $3 a share in that time period) It was the customer service that bothered me. I am going to migrate my account when I find a company that will pay for the transfer.
Just thought I should share that. Thanks.

By: FFB

FFB — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:28:59 +0000

I like my Sharebuilder account. I find the interface to set up a trade to be a bit confusing in timing the trade and turning it on (for the $4 trade option) but overall it satisfies my needs. Thanks to them I can say I own a teency tiny bit of Berkshire Hathoway (a fractional B share).

If you’re buying for the long term and don’t plan to sell often then this is a nice place to check out.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:13:42 +0000

Hi DGI, Yep, no admin fees, but standard commissions still apply ($4 or less per automatic trade, or $9.95 for real time trades). Here is the ShareBuilder IRA fee schedule.

By: Dividend Growth Investor

Dividend Growth Investor — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:36:44 +0000

Is it true that Sharebuilder doesn’t charge you any annual fee on IRAs? If that’s the case I might open one next year with them. I hate paying a $30 annual fee to my stock broker ( I didn’t pay commissions up untill early 2009 though).

By: Miss M

Miss M — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:54:50 +0000

Yep, only good for long term investors. I have an account and I’ve never paid for a trade. Sometimes you can find promo codes for free trades and they have a sign up bonus for costco members (usually between $50 – $100). I like that it’s linked to my ING account, I can log in to my savings account and see my investment balance at the same time.

By: DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad

DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:31:53 +0000

You nailed it in the close– Sharebuilder is an excellent long-term investing tool, but it is not for daytraders . . .

By: Brad Castro

Brad Castro — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:02:11 +0000

I agree with your review – I have my 3 year old’s account with Sharebuilder. This type of investment account is best suited for long term dividend growth/reinvesting strategies where you only plan to add to your positions over time.

One thing that should be noted is that although the commission on an individual purchase is only $4, if you ever plan to sell a position, you have to do that in real time which, as your table above shows is $9.95. That’s good because, as I recall, it used to be more ($15-$16).

Also, after ING acquired Sharebuilder, they expanded the brokerage service to include some basic option trades – the occasional prudent covered call might be appealing for investors in this kind of account.