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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spekulatius who wrote (29119)	11/29/2007 12:18:28 PM
From: Paul Senior	Respond to of 78753

Have not picked a broker yet. Am considering Thinkorswim. thinkorswim.com I haven't found any of the brokerage accounts I'm looking at to be exactly what I'm looking for. Some are for the inexperienced or occasional stock buyer. With these, for their "active traders", overall rates/fees/commissions are more than what I pay now. I.e. for Schwab/Ameritrade,overall it's going to cost me more than what I pay now. I can get overall costs to drop, but then again, I've got to get myself up into their premium class, and I'm not so willing to just plop that much money into an account. And since I buy a lot, but small amounts, I figure it will take me some time to put cash to work. These brokers that deal with the allegedly "experienced trader" -- like Thinkorswim -- they are tailored to encourage and capture ACTION. Whether it's buying or selling options, or turning and churning stock positions. I don't like that, and it's not how I work. I buy a lot -- stocks, but I don't have many sell orders. For example, I see with XOM, I made about 15 buys as the stock moved up over over the past few years, but only made three sells to close the position recently. With Thinkorswim, they may be flexible in how they tailor their rates to what I'd like. I've still got to contact them. Have three active brokerage accounts currently, including my still substantial account at Etrade. I have been satisfied with the support from Etrade's premium service group, and intend to stick with them, but with not such a big account as before. ---------------------- Fwiw, here are a couple of things I noticed in moving a relatively big chunk of money out of stocks: 1. My large commercial bank put a hold on the check I rec'd from E-trade. They say it's an out-of-state check, and they will release the funds in two stages: A relative pittance so far released within a week or so of deposit ; the majority being released this Monday. That's more than 10 business days after my deposit. What happened to banking law changes when the holding was supposed to be reduced? Seems like a ploy for the bank to get my money interest free. I may visit them today to update my understanding of this. 2. Geez. I am going to be VERY surprised at what my 2007 USA tax bill is going to be. Already I'm planning to use a lot of the cash I'm getting to bump up my Jan. '07 payment by a lot of thousands. And this AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) thing. The complexity of it seems impossible to understand. My accountant and I had some discussions about it in March for '06 amounts, and now ('07 income), it's going to be worse and worrisome. A surprise. Selling down and taking out cash is a good thing in the sense I will actually get a little closer to finding out what my net worth actually is. I understand I have had paper gains in this account over the past few years (lots of oil stocks), and now have realized gains that incur tax consequences. So always, when I look at my portfolio bottom line, I ought to mentally subtract something to account for this event. It's just that it's hit me that when portfolios grow over time, the tax consequences for this event are severe - the dollar amount is very high-- it is an absolute large amount (to me/my lifestyle), and if I was believing since gains are long-term, the tax rates would be maybe 15%, that is very possibly incorrect. With AMT that rate shoots up. A likelihood for me, given my other income and deductions (that are disallowed under AMT calculations). I'm apparently a lot less wealthy than I have believed. -g- I count my blessings nonetheless. To have taxable gains is better than to have losses.

To: Spekulatius who wrote (29119)	11/30/2007 8:28:02 AM
From: maverick61	Respond to of 78753

Well I am not Paul, but I give high marks to Fidelity. I consolidated all my accounts there about 20 months ago when Etrade was acquiring a couple of my Harrisdirect (which had gone thru a series of aquisitions since I started the accounts with Lombard) as well as my Waterhouse accounts (before they were due to merge with Ameritrade), plus a couple smaller Etrade accounts I had. Life has been much simpler with everything consolidated, and being able to look at rollover IRA, taxable, 529, a non-qualifeid retirement account at my former employer, even the corporate account at my current employer that I manage all at once. And their commissions I find to be competitive. Of course I do qualify for the $8 commissions - which you can qualify for with either 120 trades or $1 million in combined assets. That said, you can get decent commission rates ($10.95) with either $50K in assets, or $25k in assets and 36 annual trades. So you don't need to be a real active trader to get lower rates. Plus their customer service has been excellent - better than any broker I have dealth with. And they provide some decent extras to (lots of independent research available, invites to local seminars, conference calls with some of their managers, etc if you are into that).