great firm for a small account like many here are. Do not expect much else than free and possible lose of capital. My buddy had about $4000 and the company somehow deleted his info and money disappeared.
i dont think they would delete his information and he would lose his 4k. If that were true, we have bigger problems. Why the fuck did your friend not do anything about it. its not about the money, its the fact they took his money that should have him boiling. i believe thats a fabrication.
I did not mind zecco at first, but they are now cutting to 10 free trades per month, and that is only for accounts over $2,500. All other stock trades are $4.50 each. My problem is that I have just started getting my feet wet with my own money and do not have anywhere close to $2,500 in my account. However, I have been an active trader (I mean, wow, I have 40 free trades per month). I averaged 22% gain in August, and 10% in September. I have not had one losing trade in over 60 trades. The biggest problem is that they make you wait 3 days to recieve the cash in your account and will not let you trade on that money until the sell trade is settled. They claimed that if you sent in the Combined/Margin agreement that they would reflect your trade immediately. I did this and they updated my buying power immediately until they announced the changes in their commission structure. They will not let me trade with the amount of cash I show in my account until the third day. Do other brokers do this? The only other experience I have had is with my father's Ameritrade account and they certainly did not do this. At this time, it appears my only alternative is Tradeking, but after reading some people's comments, I don't know if that is a good alternative either. Maybe I will shift my money back to my Charles Schwab account and put my money in mutual funds at no charge. However, I know I can beat the 20 to 30% they would return for me and even the international funds have slowed down with the market turmoil, which I love, by the way. So I guess I have three potential questions. Do other brokers have this issue with settlements? Should I switch to another broker? Who should I switch to? Keep in mind that I will only have about $250 to work with here. There may be more money available in January and February, but I still think I will have less than $2,500. What do you think?
Look into trading currencies. Doesn't take much cash for that. I don't trade them myself so I can give no further advice.
Until you have 5,000 dollars in the account I would stick with Online BlackJack. http://www.partycasino.com/
I guess I am alone on this. Even though I cannot do anything with that small amount, you obviously missed the part that I am already up 39% from August until now with NO losing trades. I refuse to pay for Zecco's lack of quality unless there are no alternatives. When it was free, I could almost put up with it. It is a poor interface and they hold your money until three days after the trade. Obviously from your number of posts, most of you guys have been around a while, and I respect that because I am a newbie. I just wanted to make some comments about Zecco, since I have a little experience with them. I also wanted to see if you could give us small traders alternatives that would make this thread meaningful. I do appreciate the advice concerning currency trading, but I would be playing blackjack blind-folded if I got into that with my limited knowledge.
Unfortunately, unless something changes with the SEC, its not likely that you will make much money daytrading stocks until you get a lot more capital. For what its worth here is how it was for me a few years ago. I started daytrading with Financial Cafe. Market orders were free and I funded my account with $200.00. My strategy was to trade one share at a time and by the time I was down to $100.00, I started making money and soon got all my money back that I lost. Then I funded my account with $2,000.00 dollars and started daytrading. Using a trigger that I figured out and trading only 40 shares, I was able to make anywhere from $200 dollars to $700 a day. I would trade as much as 100 round turns a day and I only had 2 losing days and never lost more that $60 in a day until the brokerage was sold. If I bought more than that 40 shares they would split my order and sell half of it back to me at a loss. So $2000.00 in my account was all that I ever really needed to trade with them. But it severely limited my profits. I've made most of my money swing trading but its no longer exciting for me and I would rather daytrade but its much harder for me now and I yearn for the "good ole days" and the "40 share trades".
What they do to offset the "free" is come up with models to fill you outside of the spread so they can take a profit. Your execution price will end up costing you the dollars you were going to pay in commission. There's no such thing as a free lunch in the broker business.