Anybody have a good experience with Sharebuilder? I am in muy early 20's and want to get into a regular cycle of buying some stocks for an equity portfolio.
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Been a customer for 5 years, haven't had a problem. One of the easiest to setup for regular automatic investing. Let's you buy fractional shares of what they offer (dollar amount rather than number of shares).
raringvt said:It's a great way to dollar cost average...if SYSTEMATIC is what you're looking for, this can be a great way to do just that.I agree and disagree. Not to say I know what you don't know but knowing you being relatively young, the fees do add up for Sharebuilder - in my humble opinion, there are better alternatives for Dollar Cost Averaging.
Cost averaging is not always a good thing. If you can buy at a lower price, wouldn't you just buy at that lower price instead of at intermediary intervals? It's just like when the utlitiy companies put you on automatic refills/average payments (particularly for oil). Wouldn't you rather buy oil when you felt it was a good price to go in? When they put you on an automatic schedule or average your costs, you are most likely not getting the best price (in fact you are most likely paying a hefty premium).
claraj said:Cost averaging is not always a good thing. If you can buy at a lower price, wouldn't you just buy at that lower price instead of at intermediary intervals? It's just like when the utlitiy companies put you on automatic refills/average payments (particularly for oil). Wouldn't you rather buy oil when you felt it was a good price to go in? When they put you on an automatic schedule or average your costs, you are most likely not getting the best price (in fact you are most likely paying a hefty premium).
Hmmm... why not just buy at the low and sell at the high?
Like you I am new to trading/investing and used sharebuilder. I found the cost of $15 a trade to expensive for my needs. I suggest to look around for other online brokers who are substancially cheaper.
I only signed up for sharebuilder because of the promotion they are having. Its a $50 bonus to your account if you sign up through costco or GoldenOne credit union (hint, they dont really verify you have an account with GoldenOne). With the goldenone promo, you get a $25 bonus after 6 mounth if you make 1 trade a month, each month.
UserDan said:I only signed up for sharebuilder because of the promotion they are having. Its a $50 bonus to your account if you sign up through costco or GoldenOne credit union (hint, they dont really verify you have an account with GoldenOne). With the goldenone promo, you get a $25 bonus after 6 mounth if you make 1 trade a month, each month.
I opened an account and got $75 credit, I closed my account 2 years later and found out I got charge $100 account closing fee.
Another hint: I was not joking, you got what you paid for.
UserDan said:Wow that sounds high. Accourding to sharebuilder: Full account transfer out Transfers of all assets in a ShareBuilder Account to another firm $50.00
I'm not able to find it posted anywhere about the cost of selling stock.$100 does sound high. I thought $50 was the norm.
gnhcxr said:UserDan said:Wow that sounds high. Accourding to sharebuilder: Full account transfer out Transfers of all assets in a ShareBuilder Account to another firm $50.00
I'm not able to find it posted anywhere about the cost of selling stock.$100 does sound high. I thought $50 was the norm.
I just transfered my account from Sharebuilder. They charged a $50 transfer fee to cover the expenses incurred in selling partial shares. Sharebuider takes a painful lot of time to do the transfer though.
claraj said:If you can buy at a lower price, wouldn't you just buy at that lower price instead of at intermediary intervals? Everyone thinks they can time the market.
barsotti0 said:If you sign up for the basic plan it will cost you $15 to sell your shares.
Yes...but the idea of this account is to accumulate shares, not to buy and sell them. For my needs, this is a great deal and a great service. However, I do agree that if you are buying a very small amount of stock, the fees may be significant and a mutual fund may be a better bet. I would steer clear of individual DRIPS because they don't provide any diversification and essentially all of your eggs are in one (or two) basket(s). Figure out the fees involved for the amount you want to invest, and then either consider sharebuilder or a no-load fund family for your weekly/monthly investments. Behavioral finance studies show that investing this way is better than sending money when you feel like it. One reason is that you end up putting more money in. The other is (and this is the behavioral finance part) that we "feel like investing" at the times when stocks are overpriced, and we shy away from investing when there is a slump. If you setup a sharebuilder weekly/monthly plan, it takes care of that for you, and you will get a average price (actually slightly less than the mean) for your stocks.
One final word about sharebuilder -- or really investing in general. Investing is all about diversification and risk management. Even portfolio managers who have access to every tidbit of information about a company, don't put more than a few percent of their assets into a single stock. This is the same thing indiviuals should do. The eaisest way nowadays is through Exchange Traded Funds...which can easily be bought on sharebuilder.
I've had Sharebuilder accounts for a little over a year and I would say the service is excellent. It is by no means meant for active trading, but if you want to accumulate some stocks that you like over the longer term (or for your kids) it is great.
I have learned how to deal a bit better with the fees. Instead of buying monthly, I'm now depositing monthly into the account and then doing a quarterly purchase. That still gives me most of the benefit of dollar cost averaging and cuts down on the fees incurred.
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