Author Topic: Brokerage accounts for stocks?  (Read 2370 times)

jeromedawg

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Brokerage accounts for stocks?
« on: March 18, 2015, 03:04:52 PM »
Hey guys,

Just wondering what the consensus is for those of you who own stocks and what brokerage you use. Is it generally the same brokerage as whoever you have mutual funds with? I currently use Scottrade for all my stocks (as well as Loyal3 for some GPRO IPO that I got). I have a bunch of index funds, ETFs and mutual funds in Fidelity now. I actually held the stocks in Fidelity when my dad first handed me the stocks that he did way back when. Not really knowing what I was doing, I transferred all the stocks over to Scottrade (thinking I would be active in trading and whatever and that Scottrade would be great... haha). At this point, I think I should just dump the stocks and go with index funds. I'd like to avoid the brokerage fees though so was thinking about where I could consider transferring the stocks before offloading. Robinhood came to mind but I don't have iOS either (can you ever transfer existing stocks to Robinhood from another brokerage anyway?).

jmusic

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Re: Brokerage accounts for stocks?
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2015, 04:32:01 PM »
Robinhood is iOS only, they don't offer ANY other method of trading, plus you have to join a waiting list for an account.  Personally, the lack of a backup option would be a big turnoff if I was trading single stocks anyway.

Unless you have a lot of different stocks, you're probably better off just selling your Scottrade stocks and then consolidating with Fidelity.  That said, don't forget that this move would be a taxable event. 

jeromedawg

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Re: Brokerage accounts for stocks?
« Reply #2 on: March 18, 2015, 04:43:25 PM »
Robinhood is iOS only, they don't offer ANY other method of trading, plus you have to join a waiting list for an account.  Personally, the lack of a backup option would be a big turnoff if I was trading single stocks anyway.

Unless you have a lot of different stocks, you're probably better off just selling your Scottrade stocks and then consolidating with Fidelity.  That said, don't forget that this move would be a taxable event.

Right. I'm such a cheap-a too, so I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to at least avoid the measly $7 charges for when I exercise the sales haha. Anyway, assuming I shouldn't care about that fee, I'm wondering if I should go ahead and move all the stocks over to Fidelity now or if I should just sell everything via Scottrade. I guess it doesn't really matter that much if I'm going to sell them anyway. But yes, capital gains taxes are another big consideration...

Financial.Velociraptor

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Re: Brokerage accounts for stocks?
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2015, 04:44:03 PM »
Changing brokers does not have to be a taxable event.  You can do what I think they call an ICAN transfer where your positions move to the new broker electronically without buy/sell events.

I like Interactive Broker.  Useful phone app, good security, low fees.  Liberal policies on assigning options and trading permissions.

I also have a smaller amount at Wells Fargo.  If you have a "PMA" checking account with them, you get 100 "free" equity trades a year.  You'll need a total of 25k across all accounts with Wells.  Note FREE doesn't include regulatory pass through fees so you actually pay about 3 cents per trade.  Their options pricing stinks so I go with IB for that.  For straight buy/hold equity positions, I use WellsTrade.


theoverlook

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Re: Brokerage accounts for stocks?
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2015, 01:56:42 PM »
I don't do much trading - just bought my first individual shares in more than a decade in fact - but I set up an account at Vanguard to do it.  They have reasonable trading fees but they were very slow in getting my account set up.

 

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