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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: drew_m who wrote (22473)	4/9/2000 4:21:00 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

>> what Online Broker gives the most flexibility regarding IRA's? While I haven't done a comprehensive survey, I believe Fidelity is one of very few who allows the use of LEAPS in an IRA. I have had an account with Fido for 6 years and have been well pleased with their service, fees, and reporting. uf

To: drew_m who wrote (22473)	4/10/2000 2:39:00 AM
From: Dinesh	Respond to of 54805

Drew Re: Brokers Another good broker is Dreyfus. It allows options and LEAPS in IRA, and lets you also use proceeds from trades that have yet to settle - useful when you aren't allowed margin. The user interface is also very nice. Big downside is that it flows orders to Knight which has had some stability problems lately. Option prices are again not the best. So, not good for daytraders and like. I have an account with Fidelity too. Their execution is very good. So is Brown's but it's accounting is more rigorous. Brown's position keeping is great. Filled orders immediately show up in positions, saving you some silly math. (Dreyfus shows them end-of-day basis. Fidelity has apparently devised its own rules <g>) I started with PBSC which got acquired by Dreyfus; I picked Brown because they are good and economic; and Fidelity thanx to my employer. Regards Dinesh

To: drew_m who wrote (22473)	4/10/2000 2:39:00 AM
From: chaz	Respond to of 54805

Drew, I am going through the ebroker stuff myself. They are not all alike. I have accounts at Scottsdale, Datek and ETrade, used to have one at Farsight, now closed. Scottsdale is $8 a trade, Datek is $10, and ETrade is $20. There's more to it than that. Scottsdale's portfolios are 20 minute delay...drives me just nuts. Takes forever to get a check from them. You call the local office with a question, they have to call St. Louis for an answer, then they call you back. I find their printed reports hard to read. Executions are damn fast. Options are available, but not in IRA's I'm told. Datek offers almost nothing in the way of collateral services...no links to research except Big Charts. They executions are often very slow, and an order of almost any size seems to often be broken into several smaller ones, and at different prices, so I'm sure that offsets the $10 trade fee. At present, their quote system is whacko...no idea whether it's accurate or not. Also, they have many restrictions on what you can print, and it's taken me four attempts to get them to correctly allocate a recent Roth contribution (one of my son's) to year 1999. Datek does not offer options at all. ETrade is content rich, IMO. I had the same allocation problem with them as I had with Datek, and to get them to change I had to e-mail a quote from IRS bulletins. They have lots of research links, their quote and portfolio presentations are the best I've seen, and there are no print page view restrictions. They also offer options, and allow them in an IRA I believe. They take forever to answer questions, and getting them on the phone is nearly imposible. Limit orders are extra. I have placed 4 education IRS's with ETrade, and two Roth's. (For family members.) Farsight was a good service while I used it, but they raised their price from $0 to $20 and I chucked it. One of their best features was in account history, which they would sort by a number of ways...including by company, which made filling out the IRS forms very, very easy. They have options, a moderate amount of research links, and were super responsive. Executions were instantaneous. Limit orders were same price. Several friends swear by Schwab, but in small IRA's where there's not much trading, the $30 cost, PLUS an annual maintenance fee, it's just too expensive no matter how good they are. Hope this is useful to you. Chaz

To: drew_m who wrote (22473)	4/10/2000 6:19:00 PM
From: erickerickson	Respond to of 54805

re: Online brokers. I've been very happy with Accutrade. Fees are a little higher than others ($30/trade), but each time I've had to get in touch with them, they've 1> been easy to get hold of (no 30 minute wait) 2> given me accurate information from the first person I get on the phone. 3> solved my problem. Don't know whether they allow LEAPS in an IRA, certainly don't allow options. Immaterial to my investing so I haven't looked. ETrade has given me nothing but grief. 20-30 minute wait times for a real live person who, more often than not, hasn't solved my problem. Once transferred me to a department that wasn't open (after a 20 minute wait). Double-debited my account on an option exercise that took three weeks to execute. Person in California was supposed to call me back... three times, never did. My impression is that they're going for the market share thing, a-la the GG. Problem is, they've confused things. You can only ignore your customers and "ship the standard product at all costs" if you have something that has high switching costs as well as broad acceptance. Filled out a nice form in 5 minutes that is transferring all my ETrade stuff to Accutrade. Switching costs minimal. I suspect that, if you are only doing the plain-vanilla transactions, ETrade may work for you. But in my experience, if anything goes wrong it is very* difficult to get the problem resolved in a timely fashion. Now, to add a little fairness, a buddy at work has had none of the difficulties that I have. Lucky stiff, he hasn't had anything go wrong that he needed to get fixed.... Thanks for the opportunity to vent about something that's clearly been annoying me more than it should <G>. All the best Erick