they offer like 30 trades a month or something for free if you have 25k+ in your account... so no real threat to prop shops.... but on a retail level - places like td, e trade and the like might have to react...
You're right, in fact, we have been discussing it and are pretty sure that this is going to be a tremendous boost for our traders...more "sheep" hitting the "shears"...LOL. If an average retail guy who trades 5 times a month, now can trade 30 times or 40 times for free...he'll likely do so...thus we will have 14 million more "investor types" throwing money around. This has to be "a good thing". Don
Remembering that "there's no such thing as a free lunch" has alwyas worked for me. So they give free trades. But do you pay more than what commission would normally be through inefficient execution? Do they make it up by routing their orders to whoever kicks back the most for order flow? Personnally I'd rather pay some to retain more control over the process.
no no no....if it doesn't have the word free...its not good... this is America for gawds sakes! head on apply directly to the forehead....
one week before Bank of America releases news of of its new free trades offer, the BofA analyst downgraded the discount brokerage sector. hmm, does this raise any red flags?? By Greg Morcroft, MarketWatch Last Update: 9:57 AM ET Oct 6, 2006 NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Shares of TD Ameritrade fell Friday after analysts at Banc of America downgraded the shares and trimmed their earnings estimate for the company's September quarter. The Banc of America downgrade to neutral from buy came on the heels of a recent runup in the online broker's shares. As revised, Bank of America now sees TD Ameritrade posting earnings for the company's fiscal fourth quarter of 22 cents a share, down from 24 cents previously.
I keep my accts with BOA largely because of their excellent online payments capability. Of course, when I noticed that my brokerage MM accts were paying, oh, say 3% MORE than my cash accounts at BOA, you can be pretty sure that most of those funds didn't stay there. BOA is really quite niggardly on their interest payments. That's where they seem to be making their $$, along with other fees ($9.95 a month to use quicken with them - FOR WHAT?). Don't cry too hard for them. They'll do just fine in profitability.