Online Brokerages

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I owned shares of an NYSE-traded security that executed a merger on Friday eliminating the security and issuing fractional amounts of the new security. But my shares are still in limbo because my online brokerage hasn't converted them to the new security yet. How long does this generally take?

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It's not always the brokerage - mergers, acquisitions and the such need the work of the transfer agent who will physically take the old shares and issue new ones. Usually this only takes a couple of days but I have seen some take a week or so...

I'm looking to open an online brokerage account for trading stocks and buying mutual funds. I would only be making a small number of trades. What are some good sites with regards to fees, commisions, and research tools?

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Scottrade has commission free mutual funds, and $7 trades for market and limit orders, for unlimited quantities. also there are no inactivity fees (since u not trade a lot). Go here and see for yourself. I am a satisfied customer of them. go to here for a broker comparison: http://www.scottrade.com/frame_brokers.asp

What online stock brokerages seem to be the best value? Can anyone relate stories with their personal brokers and how well/crummy they do their work?

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Personally, I have had good experiences with Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and Muriel Siebert. But I don't use them for advice, I just use them to process my transactions and as a research tool. You need to evaluate brokers based on your needs, your account size, and your trading activity. Most of the major personal finance and business magazines have annual broker scoreboards: Barrons, Money, Smartmoney, even Consumer Reports. Otherwise, you can visit the various company web sites. It's a personal decision and you need to do your homework.

I recently decided to try and take control of my own portfolio and open an online brokerage account. I would like to take at least 20 positions, but that would mean at least 199 dollars in brokerage fees alone. Since I have only about 1000 dollars per month available to invest, how can I diversify without spending close to 20% on brokerage fees alone? I also invest in mutual funds, but I want to try and beat their performance with my own picks, but since brokerage fees seem to eat up so much of my initial investmant, I would really have to hit it big with my picks before I made any money and so far I haven't even recovered the cost of my brokerage fees. Are mutual funds the only way to avoid high brokerage fees? I know that mutual funds charge management fees, but I don't think that it's 20% of my investment. Any suggestions?

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It sounds like you have a good handle on the issues that you will confront. Modern portfolio theory says that you optimize your portfolio where you have maximum returns given the risk of the investments. Remember that the market only rewards you for market risk and not individual firm risk, so diversification, like you are looking for, is the way to go. Unfortunately, there are some studies that show that you begin to approach market risk in your portfolio once you have bought between 30 and 50 stocks. In addition to the brokerage costs, the time that you would spend actively maintaining a portolio to be truly diversified would amount to a full time job (not to mention the headache of doing your taxes with all the gains and losses). Mutual funds offer some of the benefits of diversification, but will cost you if you are not careful in selecting based on load and management costs. Over the long term, very very few portfolio managers continually beat the market, and the ones that do charge a premium for their services (look at Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway) which erodes your gains. Typically, the easiest and cheapest way to diversify it to buy index funds. Since these fundes are constructed and maintained by a computer to mirror the risk of the market, the idea is that you receive what the market returns over the long term. An additional benefit of these funds is that you do not need to worry about management tenure, turnover within the fund, or any of the other considerations normally associated with actively managed funds. Hope this helps.

Does anyone know networthstock online brokerage rates? Especially the margin trading rates and other trading style rates. Best answer will receive the best answer tag :) NETWorTh is an online brokerage firm in India. If anyone has an account with this firm , I need to know their online trading brokerage rates. Especially on margin trading. AM eagerly awaiting an answer for this question

Best Answer

Before anyone can answer your question you need to state it in understandable terms. If you are asking about the trading commissions charged by on line brokerage firms, they range from $1 to $10, depending on the firm, the number of shares you are buying or selling, or the monetary amount of the trade. Margin rates also vary, depending on the firm and the amount of margin. Higher debit balances typically are charged with lower margin rates than small debit balances. You may get more precise answers if you state your questions better.