I've read several posts on the "best" online brokerage and would like to hear opinions based upon my situation and biases as I'm kind of conflicted right now.
I have been using Scottrade since I first started investing when I was 18. I've stuck with them for eleven years now and they have generally been great and I have been pretty happy, but there are two things that really annoy me....
1. They do not allow stock/etf dividend reinvestments. This means whenever I get a dividend I have cash sitting in my account that is not invested, and I have to wait a significant amount of time before it makes sense for me to reinvest the cash into my portfolio to justify paying the $7 trading fee.
2. The lack of dividend reinvestment has always annoyed me, but this next one has only done so more recently when I combined my wife's assets with mine at Scottrade. We now have four accounts with them, a taxable account, an old ira account that is a throwback from a 401k plan that I had with my first job out of College, and our two Roth IRA plans. Scottrade does not allow you to have an overall portfolio view so I have to look at each account separately and calculate the asset allocations and portfolio performance myself. I just started an excel spreadsheet that does this, but it is kind of clunky and annoying. I'd really like a seamless report that could calculate my performance and asset allocation (having the asset allocation definitions to be customizable would be absolutely ideal).
I've narrowed the field down to switching my assets to Wellstrade and/or Charles Schwab. Wellstrade looks good, although I do not believe they have dividend reinvestment, but with the 100 free trades that likely would not matter. However after looking at their online demo their portfolio view does not look that robust and is pretty basic. I'd likely still need to deal with my spreadsheets.
Charles Schwab has dividend reinvestment although their trading fees are $8/trade. I am definitely not a frequent trader though and the only time I do so is when I contribute to our Roth IRAs and/or infrequently rebalance my taxable account (every equity asset class is so correlated now it doesn't even seem like rebalancing is even necessary anymore). Looking at the Charles Schwab online demo it also has this great looking "Portfolio Evaluation" view that combines all your accounts, gives you reports on how they are allocated as well as long-term performance to benchmarks (not sure if you can load historical performance into it).
So my questions are is there anyone out there that uses that Charles Schwab "Portfolio Evaluation" and is it very useful? Am I just deluding myself into thinking that I can get away from using my excel spreadsheets (I've tried using Mint as well for tracking investments but thought it was too basic.) If the Charles Schwab tool is not all that it is cracked up to be Wellstrade might be my best bet, although to be honest that whole 100 free trades idea I am a little skeptical of. With banks these days trying to get as much fee income that they can get after the passage of Dodd-Frank I wonder how long such a great deal will last and whether I might just have to end up switching all my accounts again. Thank you for any advice on this...
I have been using Scottrade since I first started investing when I was 18. I've stuck with them for eleven years now and they have generally been great and I have been pretty happy, but there are two things that really annoy me....
1. They do not allow stock/etf dividend reinvestments. This means whenever I get a dividend I have cash sitting in my account that is not invested, and I have to wait a significant amount of time before it makes sense for me to reinvest the cash into my portfolio to justify paying the $7 trading fee.
2. The lack of dividend reinvestment has always annoyed me, but this next one has only done so more recently when I combined my wife's assets with mine at Scottrade. We now have four accounts with them, a taxable account, an old ira account that is a throwback from a 401k plan that I had with my first job out of College, and our two Roth IRA plans. Scottrade does not allow you to have an overall portfolio view so I have to look at each account separately and calculate the asset allocations and portfolio performance myself. I just started an excel spreadsheet that does this, but it is kind of clunky and annoying. I'd really like a seamless report that could calculate my performance and asset allocation (having the asset allocation definitions to be customizable would be absolutely ideal).
I've narrowed the field down to switching my assets to Wellstrade and/or Charles Schwab. Wellstrade looks good, although I do not believe they have dividend reinvestment, but with the 100 free trades that likely would not matter. However after looking at their online demo their portfolio view does not look that robust and is pretty basic. I'd likely still need to deal with my spreadsheets.
Charles Schwab has dividend reinvestment although their trading fees are $8/trade. I am definitely not a frequent trader though and the only time I do so is when I contribute to our Roth IRAs and/or infrequently rebalance my taxable account (every equity asset class is so correlated now it doesn't even seem like rebalancing is even necessary anymore). Looking at the Charles Schwab online demo it also has this great looking "Portfolio Evaluation" view that combines all your accounts, gives you reports on how they are allocated as well as long-term performance to benchmarks (not sure if you can load historical performance into it).
So my questions are is there anyone out there that uses that Charles Schwab "Portfolio Evaluation" and is it very useful? Am I just deluding myself into thinking that I can get away from using my excel spreadsheets (I've tried using Mint as well for tracking investments but thought it was too basic.) If the Charles Schwab tool is not all that it is cracked up to be Wellstrade might be my best bet, although to be honest that whole 100 free trades idea I am a little skeptical of. With banks these days trying to get as much fee income that they can get after the passage of Dodd-Frank I wonder how long such a great deal will last and whether I might just have to end up switching all my accounts again. Thank you for any advice on this...
