Cost	Cost Basis	Min Trades	Min Assets	Min Fee	Max Shares
1.00 $ (1)	per trade		0.00 $
4.00 $ (2)	per trade		0.00 $
7.95 $ (3)	per trade		0.00 $
9.95 $	per trade		0.00 $		1000

Merrill Edge	0.00 - 8.95 $
Wells Fargo	0.00 - 19.95 $
Zecco	0.00 - 4.50 $
Share Builder	1.00 - 9.95 $
Just2Trade	2.50 $
Options House	2.95 $
Speed Trader	2.95 - 7.95 $
Sogo Trade	3.00 $
eOption	3.00 $
Marsco	3.95 $
MB Trading	4.95 $
Trade King	4.95 $
Firstrade	6.95 $
Trade Station	6.99 - 9.99 $
Scottrade	7.00 $
Trade Monster	7.50 $
Fidelity	7.95 $
Investrade	7.95 $
Noble Trading	7.95 $
Cobra Trading	7.99 $
ETrade	7.99 - 9.99 $
Charles Schwab	8.95 $
Options Xpress	9.95 - 14.95 $
Think Or Swim	9.95 $
TD Ameritrade	9.99 $
Siebert Net	14.95 $

Light Speed	0.00395 $
Cobra Trading	0.004 - 0.007 $
Speed Trader	0.004 $
MB Trading	0.0075 $
Interactive Brokers	0.008 - 0.013 $
Noble Trading	0.008 $
Trade Station	0.01 $
Think Or Swim	0.015 $

by 17g33k ( 50 ) on 2009-12-05 16:03:20
Sharebuilder has several strong points and several weak points. This was the first online brokerage I joined. Its appeal was its simplicity, no minimum account value to start, and documentation that is well written to help a first time investor or just inactive investors to get started. Also the fact that it was part of ING Direct gave a sense of security as you may have never heard of many of the other available online brokerages. The interface is extremely simple and hard to get confused. Their trading fees are a bit high at $9.95 per trade unless you setup automatic weekly or monthly investments in which case your trading fees drop to around $5. There several levels of membership, but they do offer a basic membership which has no monthly fee. There are no inactivity fees which is important to me because my trading goes in phases of activity.

The aspects of sharebuilder that I did not like are plenty. This brokerage caters to an investor interested in time-cost averaging rather than day trading and therefore does not freely give you real-time info, which makes trading more difficult in my opinion. There were a couple occasions where I calculated the cost of X amount of shares of a security and by the time the money made it into my account, the price had changed drastically and left me owing money. Also, the gains/losses page in the portfolio section of their website takes overnight to refresh your profit and loss which is frustrating when you want to check your numbers after a big day in the market.

As chris86 stated, their website went down for over an hour during a heavy trading day earlier this year and preventing me from doing any trading on that day which was extremely frustrating and unprofessional. I know they have upgraded their infrastructure since then to handle such peak times in trading, but this definitely affected my opinion of them.

Ultimately I chose to leave sharebuilder for thinkorswim because sharebuilder only offered access to stocks and mutual funds. I am quite new to investing, but I wanted to start looking into options and possibly futures and forex trading, but these are all things that sharebuilder does not offer.

I still manage two separate portfolios for other people using sharebuilder, but no longer trade there myself.

Sharebuilder is a great site for new investors to get started with since there is no minimum for account value and its basic features will satisfy most investors while they are getting started. It is also great for people saving strictly for retirement as it offers automatic investing and a method that is optimal for time-cost averaging. It does not have monthly or inactivity fees which is good for the casual or inactive investor. If you want to be an active investor or get into more complex trading I would recommend finding a more robust brokerage.

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by picswim ( 35 ) on 2009-11-20 10:50:31
Only used them a few times, commissions were high but there is no minimum balance and the tools were easy to use. The fact they are owned by ING Direct was a big plus for me. They fit my needs since I'm not very active.

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by chris86 ( 50 ) on 2009-10-27 18:38:40
Sharebuilder's website went down when I wanted to sell my stock and I waited for over an houre until I was able to access the site again. This has only happened to me once, but after my experience, I switched my broker to scottrade and haven't had a single problem with them.

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