Wellstrade now has free trades with only a 25,000 brokerage account.

[lazyday]

Free to trade mutual funds and stocks.

Press release

balances of $25,000 or more in any combination of loans, credit balances, brokerage accounts, savings and checking accounts, IRAs, and even 10 percent of outstanding mortgage loans.

To qualify for 100 free online trades, customers link their WellsTrade account to a Wells Fargo PMA Package.

Someone here (maybe LOL!) has indicated that the interest rate on cash balances is pretty good. I also get the impression that they don't have many hidden fees.

I don't know if they offer reporting of specific id for taxes, or if they allow same day trades in IRAs.

see these two threads on those issues: http://early-retirement.org/forums/i...p?topic=5526.0
http://early-retirement.org/forums/i...?topic=11866.0

[lazyday]

Thread on this at Diehards:
Forum at M*

Looks like you can do tax lot accounting. Still don't know about same day trades in tax-deferred.

[maddythebeagle]

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/mess...keyword1=wells

thread on fat wallet also 8)

[MasterBlaster]

The question to ask is... Who is the market maker ?

Does the trade go through the proper exchange or does Wellstrade make the trade internally and applies some big spreads between bid and ask.

Sometimes free can be pretty pricey.

[LOL!]

I use WellsTrade and I am very satisfied as I have written here before. I also have a TDAmeritrade account at the Premier/Platinum level. I've only done a few trades at WF. I can buy mutual funds not in the NTF network for $0 commission where you are not messing around with bid/ask spread. These would cost upwards of $75 at TDAm. The limit orders I have placed were executed more often at a better price than my limit. I got what I perceived to be excellent executions at WF (I used my Level II quotes of the TDAm account to watch my WF order).

TDAm has better online fixed income trading. With WF you click on "trade fixed income" and you get a dialog that says to call them up.

Maybe with the lower asset limit for $0 trades all this will change at WF and bid/ask will get large. I will be watching.

Another thought is that if they get too many new customers with this offer that the whole web site will go to a slow response time. Bummer. They need to raise the minimums to keep the riff-raff out just like Vanguard has done.

[Martha]

We are also very happy with Wellstrade. I recently bought Quicken for the first time to keep track of income and expenses for the year. Wells Fargo was extremely helpful in getting the information downloaded. Plus, because our Wells Trade account was created from a transfer from another account, they offered to imput our basis information if we sent it to them.

[lazyday]

Thanks for all replies.

According to someone at FatWallet,

Unfortunately, it is not possible to specify specific lots to sell on-line but if you phone in within same day of your sale, they will match your sale vs. purchase. Your realized gains report will then show gain correctly for each lot with purchase and sale date recorded.

Those who buy or sell Treasuries, including on auction, might want to look into total costs at Wellstrade before choosing them.
My understanding is that neither Fidelity or Vanguard have hidden charges in marking up the spread on Treasuries, and they both offer free purchase at auction, depending on account size.

The spread on stocks can also be a concern, but I avoid most of this issue by placing limit orders between the bid and ask, and if I can see my order in the quote a second or two later, I'm not concerned.

For example, if the bid is 71.20 and the ask is 71.30, I might place a buy order for 300 shares at 71.23. Then I'd get another quote, and should see the bid has changed to 3 (hundred) shares at 71.23.

[maddythebeagle]

I ended up adding a PMA account through wells am very satisfied with the application process and got everything transferred over within a week of application....highly recommended....good place to consolidate some of my drip accounts....

[Olav23]

I think it is against the law (per SEC regs) to post a trade outside of the nationally posted best bid/offer, so even if they internalize or route to whoever, they are still required to give you the best execution price.

If you aren't seeing that on your level-2 screens or wherever you get quote data, you can probably file some sort of complaint with the SEC.