E*Trade Joins The Pricing Wars
posted on: 2010-02-07 09:11:48 by Soo-Young
tags: broker news,

---

Things are really starting to heat up in the broker pricing wars. Last month, Charles Schwab stopped charging their customers based on a tiered commission structure, and started charging a single flat rate. This makes Schwab much more accessible to investors and broadens their potential market. Just a few days ago, Fidelity followed suit and also started charging their customers a single flat rate. Now E*Trade has entered the pricing wars by changing their standard commission from $12.99 to $9.99. Before, the $9.99 commission was only available to investors with a $50,000.00+ account. Now all I'm wondering is if there will be an E*Trade Superbowl ad for these new prices.

E*Trade's Commission Page
E*Trade's Bullishness.com Commission Comparison

Before:


After:


Full Disclosure: Bullishness.com and the author of this article are both not affiliated in any way to E*Trade Financial.

Fidelity Slashes Stock And Option Fees Across The Board
posted on: 2010-02-05 06:46:51 by Soo-Young
tags: broker news

---

Last January, Charles Schwab slashed their fees by removing the tiered commission structure. Fidelity has followed suit by replacing their $19.95, $10.95, and $8.00 tiered fees with a $7.95 flat fee (ad $0.75 per options contract). The broker pricing war is heating up and you as the consumer only stand to gain. Bullishness.com is the only site on the internet that tracks stock broker fees on a daily basis. Stay tuned to the blog for more broker updates, and happy trading.

Before:


After:


Full Disclosure: Bullishness.com and the author of this article are both not affiliated in any way to Fidelity Brokerage Services.

Most Popular Online Stock Brokers January 2010
posted on: 2010-02-01 10:49:33 by Soo-Young
tags: site news, popular brokers

---

For last month, the most popular online stock brokers on this site were as follows.

1. Think Or Swim
2. Just2Trade (up 1 from last month)
3. Options House (up 1 from last month)
4. Speed Trader (up 1 from last month)
5. Zecco

Think Or Swim retained its top spot in January, while Just2Trade, Options House, and Speed Trader all got bumped up one spot each. With the news of Charles Schwab changing their fee structure and their massive advertising presence (I couldn't turn my head without seeing a Schwab ad). Anyway, take these statistics as you will, and happy trading.

Most Popular Online Stock Brokers December 2009

Did Online Broker Just2Trade.com Get Hacked?
posted on: 2010-01-25 07:00:26 by Soo-Young
tags: broker news

---

For the past few days I've been receiving notifications from Bullishness.com's commission checking tool that Just2Trade's website hasn't been working. I assumed that they were upgrading their system over the weekend (the market is closed over the weekend after all) and that everything would come back online today, but yet again, in my inbox, I received a notification about how Just2Trade's website was down. This is happening both on my personal computer at home and my web server, which is based remotely. Very strange!

I did some more digging, and found that their website was indeed down. If you go to Just2Trade.com, you'll see a white screen, and the source code reveals nothing going on behind the scenes (the source file is completely blank). For an online stock broker to be down on an open trading day is definitely alarming.


I did more sleuthing and found something on Twitter that would also suggest that Just2Trade got hacked. A Twitter post from 5 days ago reads: "seems kind of odd to me that Just2Trade twitter page is all in Russian, trying to get a account with them but they seem to be slow so far." Twitter posts are usually not the most credible source of information, but because this is coming at around the same time as Just2Trade's down time seems to indicate something fishy is going on.

This is all speculation, but Just2Trade's website is down on a trading day, which is never supposed to happen. If you have an account with Just2Trade and have any other information about this, please email me at .

Is Apple Going To Bed With Bing?
posted on: 2010-01-24 22:42:58 by Soo-Young
tags: internet news

---

The internet is a big part of my life, and I can't help but keep up with the industry. Recently, I read an article on Mashable about how Apple might change their default search engine from Google to Bing. This is driven mainly by the inroads Google is making in the mobile phone market with Android and the Nexus One. I'm not sure about the technology that drives Bing, but I have a very strong feeling that Google's search results are of a better quality than Bing's.

I really think if Apple wants to play the game with Google, they should build their own search engine and brand it like any of their other products (cool, chic, and classy). I'm sure they could drive droves of mac-heads to their search engine just based on the power of their brand. It seems like a much better idea, at least in my mind, to create their own search engine instead of partnering with a second rate search engine like Bing.

I couldn't help but notice the homepage for Bing has an image of, what looks to be, an arctic cat. Apple's latest version of their operating system, Mac OS X, is named Snow Leopard. Coincidence? Heh heh.