Its been a while since I looked at basement investing...
Without looking, dont most mutual funds (for non-IRA use) require an initial minimum investment of $1000-3000?
As far as the $4 trade on an etf to hold for a while...I was under the impression that these services only allowed trading like that on certain days, or required a higher rate, or required a regular committed periodic investment of funds that were subjected to a fixed fee charge?
(A short look at the site shows that the $4, no monthly fee trades can only be made on tuesdays)
I'd also like to see the bid/ask spread on their buys vs other brokerages, and the execution speed. This might be a case of paying a very small visible fee on the front end and getting completely hosed on the trade, to the benefit of the execution trader. Its been a while since i looked at these, but this is how I think this works...someone with more current knowledge please hack me to bits if I use the wrong punctuation.
By concentrating the transactions on a single day, the company can take trade orders, figure out the volumes of each stock issue/etc/whatever they need to buy. When the bid/ask spread is favorable, they buy the lots they need. Then they 'sell' them to you at the highest transaction point of that trading day.
I believe this used to be called "scalping".
There is no free lunch.