Charles Schwab Online Brokerage Account Review

Charles Schwab is one of online brokerage site which offers financial service as well as a trading platform to buy online stock for its investors. Schwab also has over 300 local offices. They are able to offer a full range of banking, brokerage, and investment advisory services to their large client base. Other financial services include retirement planning, mutual fund trading, equity trading or stock trading, and financial planning. They are one of the largest financial brokers in the world with > 7.5 million accounts with customer assets in excess of $1.4 trillion. It also 11 Free commission ETFs for trade recently.

Schwab aka Chuck Details

As one of largest brokerage in the world, Charles Schwab was founded in 1971 as First Commander Corporation. The current headquarter is located at San Francisco, CA USA. Charles Schwab Corporation is a brokerage and banking company listed in NYSE with ticker: SCHW.

It currently uses its own clearing service to hold the client asset. Charles Schwab Clearing Services (CSCS), member of FINRA & SIPC, holds and clears all client trade. All Charles Schwab accounts are insured under SIPC up to $500,000 ($100,000 cash) and supplemental Lloyd’s of London coverage up to $150 million ($1 million cash).

Products: Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, CDs, insurance, annuities, foreign investments
Market Orders: $8.95 / trade
Limit Orders: $8.95 / trade

Auto Phone Orders: $13.95 / trade

Broker-Assisted Orders: $33.95 / trade

Schwab’s ETF Market/Limit Orders: $0.00

Mutual Funds: $49.95 & $0.00 for NTF funds.
Options: $8.95/trade+$0.75/contract
Minimum to Open: $1000 for US-based accounts, $25000 or $10000 for foreign accounts

Inactivity Fee: $0.00
Some Other Fees: Wire Transfer Outgoing: $25.00 per transfer. ACAT Out: $50.00.
Maximum Margin Rate: Based on proprietary base rate

Commission & Pricing

For stock or ETF order, the standard commission is $8.95 per trade with no limit of shares amount. As noted, for broker-assisted trades, the commission is $33.95 per order. When trading during pre and post market hours, there is no additional fees such as ECN fees.  Charles Schwab applies a simplified flat-fee based commissions structure. There is no catches or fine print notes for trading using Schwab. There are no limits on total trade size or price. If you are trading more than 10,000 shares or $500,000, you may be eligible for special handling and pricing.. 

Stock trading (i.e. buy stock online) can be done through web based platform as well as software platform, StreetSmart Pro. StreetSmart Pro is available to active trading customers.

For option, the customer can use their option platform thru web. The cost of 1 contract will cost $9.70 commission fee ($8.95 ticket fee + $0.75 per contract), while 10 contracts will cost $16.45 commission fee.

For mutual funds, there are about 1,900+ no load no transaction fee mutual funds with no commission fee for buy or sell through OneSource Funds. There are 3,000+ mutual funds for selection with $49.95 per trade of mutual funds.


Also featured in My Review of Charles Schwab Online Brokerage Account and ETF

Top 5 Best Domestic Stock Mutual Funds

As part of stock mutual fund, investing in domestic stock funds are essential for assets allocation. These domestic stock mutual funds are also known as U.S. stock mutual funds. These best rated domestic stock mutual funds include American Funds Growth Fund of America fund, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, Vanguard Total Stock Market fund, etc.

Intro

As we know, there are three types of mutual funds. They are stock mutual fund, bond mutual fund, and balanced fund. Stock mutual funds can be classified into 2 main classes such as domestic stock funds or US stock funds, and international stock funds (including emerging markets). The domestic stock funds invest mainly in US companies.

There are 9 categories of domestic stock mutual funds. The categories are: large growth, large blend, large value, mid-cap growth, mid-cap blend, mid-cap value, small growth, small blend, and small value. These domestic stock funds may specialize in a particular sector of the market such as technology, financials, health care, utilities, communications, natural resources, real estate, and miscellaneous.

Position update - MCK, FLIR, URS & SRS

My position is still healthy and is gaining momentum especially MCK (Mckesson) and FLIR (FLIR System). MCK reaffirmed the earning and announced new shares buyback. FLIR has posting good earning last week. I continue to like the chart and look to be slightly breakout today after 2-3 days flagging.

URS also reverse course and closed out only slightly negative for the day.

My SRS hedge also turned positive. I'll keep holding this hedge just in case the market turn violently.

I'm also eyeing some bond CEFs and solid stocks. I'll see how these CEFs will react to downside after more down day. Usually, it will create an arbitrage opportunity for short term trade. Some solid stock also turn negative such as Pepsi (PEP), FirstEnergy (FE), TEVA and SWN . I'll look into these stocks if the market turn negative.

Overall, it was a good day for MEPB Financial.

Note: Please trade responsibly.

Top 10 Cheapest Online Discount Brokerage Account and More

With the current stock market, finding a good & cheap online discount brokerage is important. Fees can cut into the trading profit. The following top 10 cheapest discount brokerages are: Lightspeed Trading, Interactive Brokers, Just2trade, OptionsHouse, eOption, SogoTrade, Zecco, TradeKing, MB Trading, and Lowtrades.
I will provide a summary of various online stock brokerages with their commissions and fees. I have been using multiple trading platforms such as Fidelity, Zecco, Vanguard, Lightspeed, and Just2trade. For me, the brokerage needs to satisfy the following requirement:

1. Low commission fees or cheap fees to trade or buy stocks, etfs, and mutual funds
2. Reliable, can be access freely, stable trading platform
3. Offer ACH electronic transfer
4. Responsive and contactable customer service

To get the low commission fee, usually an investor or trader will need to sacrifice some investment tool such as good charting, tax tool, financial services, transfer capability etc. So don't be surprised about the barebone platform for this discount brokerage. You can essentially supplement the lack of features by open another account with full service brokerage such as Fidelity, Schwab, etc or you can just use internet service such as stockcharts & finviz for charting and filter.

Brokerages Logo

Top 10 cheapest online discount stock brokers to trade stock or ETF are:

1. Lightspeed Trading

Lightspeed offers stock, etf, option, forex and future for trading. The cost to buy stock online is the cheapest discount brokerage as far as I know. To trade stock, you only pay for $0.00395 per shares with $0.40 per 100 shares. The minimum is $0.40 per trade. There is no ticket fee to buy option; it only cost $0.50 per option contract. The minimum balance to open is only $1,000 for cash account and $2,000 for margin account using Lightspeed Web Trader. If you are using Lightspeed Trader which is software based platform, the minimum balance requirement is $10,000.

more can be read at: Top 10 Cheapest Online Discount Brokerage Account and More

My thought about the current market & my holding update

Although most indexes were in red, I still don't think any trader should turn bearish right away. Most bond is still up junk bond is still only down a little. Should be interesting to see what tomorrow will bring. A correction of 3-5% is expected after 12-15% run up for dow jones and S&P 500.

I have decided to post my holding for the first time. I'll try to track and update as I buy or sell my position. My current stock holding (small position) is:

• FLIR (Flir System) - Defense
• MCK  (Mckesson Corp) - Drug Service
• URS (URS Corp) - Engineering Services
• ACL ( Alcon) - Drug / Healthcare
• MRK (Merck) - Drug /healthcare

Long term:

• JNK - Junk Bond
• VMO - Muni Bond Closed End Fund (CEF)
• VGM - Muni Bond Closed End Fund (CEF)
• Cash -- Ton of them

Please trade responsibly!

updated on 10/20/2010

Another crash on SPY ETF or bad print?

This post is about an unknown phenomenon on stock market especially the S&P 5000 SPDRs ETF (SPY). You can find another crash on SPY ETF or bad print on October 18, 2010.

SPY chart

I noticed this chart when I do my end of day analysis. I hope this is a bad print and not another crash.

Top 5 Emerging Market Mutual Funds

With developed countries (USA & Europe) economy is cooling down or at least slow down, everyone will look at growing sector or market to invest. One of these markets is diversified emerging market.

Emerging market usually include most developing countries in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Some of these countries are known as BRIC acronym (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Most analysts predict emerging market will drive all future growth for the next decade. Investor should look to invest in emerging market. Emerging market is part of international market; this mean investing in this emerging market can be volatile at the times. Please invest responsibly.

Best Emerging Markets Funds

I think emerging market should be part of your investment portfolio whether it is in your 401k retirement or brokerage account. The question is how to invest in emerging market; there are two easy ways to invest such as using ETF and Mutual Funds.

The following article will discuss about Top 5 mutual funds in emerging market. The following is top 5 emerging market mutual funds in term of asset. What I like is usually big asset is equal to big confident by investor or institutional money to invest in this fund. I also like most of these asset managers as they are well known to many investors

1. Vanguard Emerging Market Stock Index, VEIEX
2. American Funds New World Fund A, NEWFX
3. Lazard Emerging Markets Equity, LZOEZ
4. Oppenheimer Developing Markets, ODMAX
5. DFA Emerging Markets Value Portfolio DFEPX

Vanguard Emerging Market Stock Index

The Vanguard Emerging Market Stock Index portfolio tracks the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which is weighted toward the largest companies in the largest emerging markets. The fund performance is as follows (VEIEX): 1 Year: 19.73% per year 3 Year: -2.19% per year 5 Year: 13.50% per year 10 Year: 13.66% per year.

American Funds New World Fund

This American Funds’ New World Fund is a diversified international fund that has managed to stay less volatile than most other emerging-market rivals.

Lazard Emerging Markets Equity

The Lazard Emerging Markets Equity Portfolio fund has performed better by picking undervalued stocks of companies based in a wide selection of emerging-market countries. The Lazard Emerging Markets Equity fund objective is to provide long-term capital appreciation by investing in companies with strong, sustainable financial productivity at attractive valuations.

Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund

The Oppenheimer Developing Markets investment aggressively seeks capital appreciation. The fund normally invests more than 80% of assets in equity securities of issuers whose principal activities are in at least three developing markets.

DFA Emerging Markets Value Portfolio Fund

The primary objective is to seek long-term capital appreciation. The fund invests normally at least 80% of net assets in emerging markets investments that are defined as Approved Markets securities and may purchase emerging market equity securities across all market capitalizations whether it is large cap, mid cap and small cap.

More can be read at: Top 5 Best and Popular Emerging Market Mutual funds