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

To: H Peterson who wrote (35470)	11/28/2000 1:41:45 AM
From: Joshua Corbin	Respond to of 54805

Joshua, or anyone else. Have you had a account with either one and are there pro's and con's that may have been encountered with either. I am a Sharebuilder customer and I now use it exclusively for all my non-IRA trades. IMHO, these services are the greatest thing to come along since the birth of online brokerages. Sharebuilder and Buyandhold.com cater toward dollar-cost averaging. They are as far as you can get from swing trading and market timing without buying an index fund. You set up a regular investing plan that automatically buys exact dollar amounts of stock every week or month. They even let you have partial shares and automatically reinvested dividends. These brokers sell you stock the way Wal-Mart sells dry goods: they buy in bulk and pass the savings onto the customer. Instead of offering real-time trades, all orders are bundled and exercised together. Sharebuilder charges $2 a trade for scheduled purchases, which are made only on Tuesday afternoons. BuyandHold charges $2.99 (or $10 for unlimited) and trades during two one-hour daily trades. Keep in mind that these guys are absolutely useless to people who fancy themselves traders. There's no margins, no options, no short selling. For those with long time horizons, however, this is a painless way to build up a significant portfolio. For those trying to cure the leverage bug, it can be good discipline. Let's say you wanted to own a G&K basket. Or you just wanted to buy one or two good companies. You could simply set up a plan that would divide your monthly contribution between each stock. I'm happy because it takes all the fuss and stress out of buying. No more trying to watch stock charts and play with the real-time quotes. Money is automatically deducted from my checking account and invested without my having to lift a finger. Links follow Here's Sharebuilder's pitch: sharebuilder.com Motley Fool's take on Sharebuilder is here: fool.com Here's Buyandhold's pitch: buyandhold.com Motley Fool's take on BuyandHold.com is here: fool.com (This predates the $10 all-you-can-eat plan.) (Note: There's a third player in this sector called FolioFN, which charges a $295 annual fee in lieu of commissions. I know little about it.)