TDAmeritrade, $1000 bonus $30k min. new account (DEAD)

As pointed out in "New Trading Accounts" thread, the deal was available. But you had to do this right, on first try - offer is DEAD now

(4/9) Now, since everyone who had 30/60/90k to spare and wanted to take advantage of unusual bonuses - did so; this topic should fair better. There were people, who doubted deal existed - just because it was never listed...

We are trying to compile score in this format (results did vary slightly, and it may be offered next year):
1. How much bonus resulted ($1,000 or $1,100 or $950; possibly $2,000, $3,000 within household?)
2. How many days (following funding) before bonus credited (0, 1, 2, 5 days, ?)
3. What choice of fixed-income elected/considered (rypqx, GMAC 9mo-CD, ?)
4. Was there any loss that reduced yield (trading loss, service charge, some fee, interest foregone for # of days)
5. Any Apex, Starwood Points perks/strategy
6. Any footnotes

(as of 4/18) There is another special that I'll be e-mailing individually

Don't put a link to the deal or the other thread or anything.

I normally don't give red to anyone, but in this case I'll jump out of my courtesy shoes.

How high are the hoops?

do only US residents qualify?

YiFeng said: How high are the hoops?

The main hoop is the possible lack of time remaining to jump on it.

Requires tieing up $30k for 9 months. (Perfect for a recently completed 12-mo 0% BT!) In an emergency, the money can actually be withdrawn, but the $1k bonus will be forfeited.

Maybe excludes people with current TDA accounts - not sure. (Perhaps -but check with new accounts- an existing TDA customer can just open another account.)

And I can't remember if being a US citizen was a requirement, but your answer is a phone call away from TDA new accounts: 800-454-9272

Electronic funding via ACH from savings or checking after online application is instant.

TU will be pulled.

jakeru, how long did it take to get the bonus?

Next step for me is:
Where to invest in TDAmeritrade the $31.2k for 9 months?

I am currently scheduled to have uninvested balances go into a "TD Asset Management Money Market Class A" automatically, but it's got a near 1% expense ratio which to me seems high. weekly yield as of yesterday was 2.28% APY. A TDA investor with 250k assets can get a .4% APY break on expenses (bumping yield up to 2.68% APY.) The prospectus discloses there is a possibility of value loss (but seems like would be very extraordinary. Invests in treasuries and reputable bonds.) I wonder if there is a better MMF alternative (with no load / no cost preferably) with lower expenses, better yields and low risk?

There are FDIC insured bank CDs available (including from Wa Mu), 6 months or 9 months (but can't be purchased until end of the month), and they are yielding about 3.4%. I haven't checked on fees involved to get into one. I've got some time to decide, because CD purchases generally "close" at the end of the month.

Treasuries are available, but don't seem very attractive due to current, yield to maturity of about 1.x% over the same horizon - about 2% less than a CD!

Now that doesn't sound too good.

Also regarding buying CDs - I found that the "fee" was already built into the CD APY quoted by the brokerage. That seems like news that bodes well for the CD.

Maybe that explains why Wa Mu online is selling a 4% APY 6 month CD, while TD Ameritrade version of same Wa Mu CD is 3.4x% APY. Their "fee" is the .5x% APY difference.

There are also some funds (but many do not qualify) with no transaction fee and no load. There is a fee if you don't hold for 90 days. Still searching for prospective mutual fund candidates.

I think I need to look at "safe" money market funds, but haven't figured out how to get the TDA mutual fund search tool to give me those.

Opened a account for me and wifey and got both bonus plus free trades for a month. Nice.

Vanguard has a nice money market selection, but they don't seem to be coded into the TDA system as the "no transaction fee" variety. (or, are they?) Anyway, I'm not really clear about what fees would be involved.

TDA prices page says for one not designated "no transaction fee", if it's no-load, it's $50 per mutual fund transaction. Would they charge that to buy, and then again to sell? That would be like an extra .25% - .50% of expense ratio for a 9 month time horizon.

The Vanguard fund looks solid as far as a MMF. It does have corporate securities which can hardly be described as "risk free". They have some other options with more treasuries but the yields are lower.

I am kinda leaning towards the 3.4% 9-month Wa Mu CD at this point, with all interest credited at maturity. Kind of a nice "set it and forget it" option. No worry with FDIC insurance. It's even a fairly competitive APY.

If the rates keep dropping, it would be good diversification to have guaranteed locked in yield. I've got other A O R OPM invested in variable savings and high yield checking.

There is another CD offered by TDA from a bank I never heard of, "doral bank" (puerto rican?) that has monthly interest instead of yearly which would yield about $10 more bucks (interest credited monthly). There is also a GMAC CD with same terms as Wa Mu. I think I'd opt for the Wa Mu because I already am tuned in to their stability, as I have mortgage and other deposit accounts with them so am already tracking their health.

Update:
check this out - Doral Bank Direct has 6 and 9 month CDs for 3.75% APY. the 3.75% APY 9-month is quite market competitive. TDA's price on exact same thing is just .297% APY lower, at 3.453% APY. Effectively, would cost $68 extra (for a $30k 9 month CD) for going through TDA instead of direct.

Looks like to buy a CD through a brokerage like TDA, they have a certain day for which the transaction can be offered, you can schedule in advance to go through with? (In this case, it's end of month transaction date.)

Update2:
A local TDA branch guy called me to generally make contact and we had a nice discussion.

I told him the investment choices I was looking at and he suggested a higher yeilding mutual fund with "no load, no transaction fee" fund that looks interesting:
The Reserve Yield Plus Fund class "R", "RYPQX"

Compared to the sweep MMF I'm in now, it's got about the same ~1% expense ratio, but a much healthier 3.30% yield (effective, based on last 7 days) compared to 2.x% in the current sweep MMF. I think it's got longer term holdings to juice the returns a bit (prospectus says up to 2 years individually (with one infrequent exception), and 90 day average.)

More performance info

My bad, jakeru , that I haven't suggested Reserve to you in our discussion a couple of days back. I've been to their Shareholder meeting - gave up my votes, they said unless I own 80mln shares, I can't make a difference LOL! But recently, I've been under impression that unless you're grandfathered at TDA, Reserve wouldn't accept their new customers. Your rep may prove my impression wrong.

Does this work if you already have an existing account or does it have to be completely new?
Does this work for existing clients? What if you are the joint account holder but not the main holder?

one likely to need more than code now, since time overrun

Your Miles May Vary, now... First, yesterday's date was of some significance. Secondly, their discretion is somewhat dependant on your conviction. There is little to be lost either way... For everyone who is constructive, I'll provide e-mail support

Just got friend's e-mail: "buy rypqx fund". Something to check...

jakeru said: Next step for me is:
Where to invest in TDAmeritrade the $31.2k for 9 months?

I am currently scheduled to have uninvested balances go into a "TD Asset Management Money Market Class A" automatically, but it's got a near 1% expense ratio which to me seems high. weekly yield as of yesterday was 2.28% APY. A TDA investor with 250k assets can get a .4% APY break on expenses (bumping yield up to 2.68% APY.) The prospectus discloses there is a possibility of value loss (but seems like would be very extraordinary. Invests in treasuries and reputable bonds.) I wonder if there is a better MMF alternative (with no load / no cost preferably) with lower expenses, better yields and low risk?

There are FDIC insured bank CDs available (including from Wa Mu), 6 months or 9 months (but can't be purchased until end of the month), and they are yielding about 3.4%. I haven't checked on fees involved to get into one. I've got some time to decide, because CD purchases generally "close" at the end of the month.

Treasuries are available, but don't seem very attractive due to current, yield to maturity of about 1.x% over the same horizon - about 2% less than a CD!

jakeru said: I just checked in with TDA local branch employee (they were closed for the market holiday, but he let me in anyways... good guy) and he did verify that the transaction-fee variety of mutual funds would have the $50 transaction fee applied upon purchase, and then again applied upon sale. Resulting in a total of $100 extra fees. (Ouch for those options!)

The "no transaction fee" mutual fund options (RYPQX, perhaps there are other "the reserve" offerings?) would be the way to go. Would still need to hold on to for 90 days to avoid hefty early withdrawal fee (= ~$180 on a $30k balance.)

Also, I found there is no fee to close the account, if you liquidate the portfolio to cash, and ACH it out. Yay! (The "full/partial account transfer fee" shown in the pricing page, apparently applies when maintaining the non-liquidated portfolio holdings, and transferring them over to another brokerage.)

Also, learned some info on TDA CDs. They get fresh ones in about once per week. Generally come in early in the week, and "picked through" by friday. If you look at a TDA CD's total amount available to purchase, that amount drops as time goes on, as more people buy them up. Once it drops to zero, the CD is no longer available for purchase.

For a CD investment strategy, I'm thinking there might be benefit in waiting until next week for a 9-week CD with proceeds "at maturity" became available in early 2009. The current 9-month offerings mature on Dec 31, 2008. An early 2009 date with all proceeds "at maturity" (not monthly) may give the effect of deferring the tax obligation by 1 year.

Sounds good. Let me know which cd is good and I am all for it. Thanks.

SinglePapa said: My bad, jakeru , that I haven't suggested Reserve to you in our discussion a couple of days back. I've been to their Shareholder meeting - gave up my votes, they said unless I own 80mln shares, I can't make a difference LOL! But recently, I've been under impression that unless you're grandfathered at TDA, Reserve wouldn't accept their new customers. Your rep may prove my impression wrong.

There are two "the reserve" fund categories: "treasurer's trust" (ryptx) which requires a $250k minimum deposit, and apparently can be made a sweep account with enough adequate TDA holdings, and "R" class (rypqx) that is open to any TDA user, but has something like .4% higher expense ratio.

I am slightly a bit edgy about either "the reserve yield plus" options for two reasons: 1. they are not a true money market fund, but seem to be something more aggressive (longer time horizon holdings... they say individual up to 2 years, and there is a 10 year sallie mae student loan bond as well) although average holding is still low and they seem CLOSE to a money market though. 2. a statement of their assets from last annual report indicated they held Bear Stearns bonds. We all know Bear Stearns had a huge collapse and last minute buy out. So is the fund operating too risky for putting OPM into it?

Openings continue...

Double-dipping is not at all guaranteed: initial $100 bonus may well be deducted back upon $1,000 credit

This is fantastic news! I would caution you, though, to take defensive action. Two people reported roll-back yesterday

I noticed the same thing -- the valuation of my CD jumped from under 100% to above 100% of the nominal over the last couple of days (and as far as I can tell there have not been any significant moves in the CD valuation for the 4 months prior). It's totally counterintuitive to me, as it seems that a 3.5% APR CD with maturity in Jan'09 should continue to devaluate as rates appear to climb up ... but what do I know?.. Another interesting piece of info here is that (afaik) Jakery and I bought CDs from different banks (mine is from Firstbank PR), yet both suddenly decided to appreciate.

Edit to add: btw, RPQYX discussed earlier in the thread is doing quite well, +3.77% YTD.