Sharebuilder versus Etrade: Commissions, Fees and Investments Offered
- Automatic Investments: Basic plan - $4 per investment
- Standard plan - $12/month, you get 6 automatic investments and each additional is $2
- Advantage plan - $20/month, you get 20 automatic investments and each additional is $1
- $9.99 per real-time stock/etf trade
- Options: Early Exercise - $30 per early exercise, no trade commission; Automatic Exercise -
$20 per automatic exercise, no trade commission
- Mutual funds: $19.95
- $9.99 if 0-149 trades per quarter; $7.99 if 150+ trades per quarter per stock/etf trade
- Options: $9.99 plus $0.75/contract if 0-149 trades per quarter; $7.99 plus $0.75/contract if 150+ trades per quarter
- Mutual Funds: $19.99
- Futures contracts: $2.99 per contract, per side + fees
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Sharebuilder vs Etrade: Advantages
- Very low Automatic Investing Plans costs
- Free dividend and capital gains reinvestment
- No account minimum
- No setup and annual fee IRA and ESA accounts
- No inactivity or maintenance fees
- Ability to buy fractions of a stock
- $0 to open cash account, $2,000 for margin account
- Great trading platform
- No setup and annual IRA account fees, no minimums with electronic statements and confirms
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Sharebuilder vs Etrade: Disadvantages
- Real-time trades at $9.95 are expensive
- You don't know at what price you are buying investments with Automatic Investing Plans
- Terrible trading tools
- Slow executions
- Few mutual fund choices
- Expensive commissions on all asset classes
- Etrade's trading desk might trade against you
- Customer service responsiveness depends on the size of account and frequency of trades
- First transfer holds your funds for nearly two weeks
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Sharebuilder and Etrade Websites and Ratings
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