Why Etrade is great:
Early this year, Etrade got a great deal of bad press regarding system problems. As someone who works with Windows NT Servers on a daily basis, I know all about system crashes, and I know sometimes they happen for no logical reason at all. With that in mind, I believe Etrade corrected the problem in a reasonable amount of time.
One of the biggest complaints people had during the outages was that they were either unable to place trades, or got poor order executions. In my opinion, if someone needs executions 100% of the time to be filled with no delay, they should not use a service like Etrade. They should set up an account with a day trading firm that will give them this. However, for the average investor, 99% uptime (which I believe Etrade achieves) is perfectly fine.
In addition to the 99% uptime Etrade provides, their access to IPO's is first rate. Yes, one has to be online at the right time to place indications of interest, but the great thing about Etrade is they do not limit IPO access to 100K or higher accounts. All Etrade customers are treated the same and have as good a chance as anyone to get an IPO, and the shares are allocated on a first come first serve basis. As Etrade begins to underwrite IPO shares in the near future, even more Etrade customers will get shares. Speaking for myself, I have made over 20K on Etrade IPO shares alone, and had I not flipped EBAY it would be more like 60K. This is with an account that originally started with a 2K balance!
So, in addition to the access Etrade provides with IPO's, I also appreciate their other services. You get check writing, a reasonable money market interest rate, good margin rates, and access to other things sure as an Etrade Platinum Visa card with a 9.9% rate. Also, recently Etrade has added their own mutual funds such as Etrade S&P 500 tracking fund.
Additionally, the last 2 months I have kept a written record of orders I have placed and noted the price of shares when I clicked on the mouse. I have found about 80% of the time I get that price (at market), 11% of the time I get a higher price, and 9% of the time I get a lower price. Considering the performance of the markets over this period, I believe this is about right. I suspect people complaining about their executions are ignoring fills at better prices, and only noting fills at higher than expected prices.
Well, that is about it for now. Welcome any comments on Etrade or other brokers. |
