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Pastimes : ETRADE Sucks! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (1180)	11/18/1998 2:55:00 PM
From: Curly Q	Respond to of 3262

How about Merrill Lynch as a broker? The commissions are certainly higher, but the dependability will limit market exposure to your decision. And the probability is that the fills overall will be better, making up for the commission cost difference. Further, their cma accounts pay about the rate of a 30 year bond when your sitting on the sidelines. Probably a whole percentage point more than the deep discounters. But I'm not sure about that, I only have an account at MER. The lesson of Anne Schreiber was not lost on me. She amassed a fortune in stocks. She though was greatly concerned with commissions. Her way around that conundrum was to NEVER sell. She had previously been burned, losing her entire portfolio when a lower commission broker went belly up. The story is that she put her initial savings at a house where her brother worked. She lost all her money, so she started over using Merrill Lynch. Even though she became fabulously wealthy, she didn't spend money. But, as she became richer and richer, she grew to deeply hate her brother for if not for him she would have been even more magnificently wealthy. Never mind the fact that it was a misfortune which couldn't logically be assigned to the brother.