My Zecco Review
Zecco Review: $0 Stock Trades?!
What follows is an honest review of Zecco.com based on my personal experience with them. I maintain my Zecco account to this date.
If you invest in stocks or mutual funds, you know how limiting trading fees can be when you want to buy or sell through your broker. If you like to dollar cost average or simply have smaller amounts to invest, even a $4 or $7 trading fee can cut into your returns. It’s for this reason that I decided to try Zecco.com, to take advantage of their free stock trades.
Discount Brokers I’ve Tried other than Zecco
In addition to Zecco for my personal account, I recently switched my ETrade IRA to
, who offers a no-fee IRA with zero inactivity fees. I had been using Scottrade for my personal account, whose $7 trades were once considered the lowest in the business. However, new competitors such as TradeKing and Zecco have really challenged the industry. I’m a little disappointed that ETrade and Scottrade haven’t lowered their stock trade pricing to stay competitive.
Zecco’s Business Model
Zecco offers 10 free trades per month if you maintain an account balance of $25,000 or more. How can they afford to do this? According to them, they make their money from charging for:
- trading in excess of 10 per month
- options trades
- website ads
- margin trading
- advanced trading tools
- IRA fees
- Other assorted fees
Where Zecco Reviews Well:
- Zecco offers free trades if you maintain a balance of $25,000 or more. This is AWESOME for those intending to invest in stocks and ETF’s. I don’t intend on trading more than 10 times in any given month. But if I do go over 10 trades, trades are only $4.50, which is still cheap compared to most of the competition.
- These guys are legit. They are SIPC members and your account is insured up to $500,000 in cash and $100,000 in securities.
- They have a social network aspect so that you can communicate with other investors.
- Service. The one time I did call for customer service, I was on hold for less than a minute. I spoke with an American, and he was extremely friendly.
Where Zecco Reviews Not so Well:
- Zecco does not have ‘no fee’ mutual funds. Mutual fund purchases are $10/each (which is cheap compared to non no-fee funds at other discount brokers). However, if you invest in ETF versions of indexes, with their zero fees, this actually works out better for you, since you pay nothing for the trade.
- IRA’s have a $30 annual fee and $30 closing fee. For that reason, I have opted to not use Zecco for my IRA.
Who is Zecco a Good Option for?
Zecco is an excellent option for non-IRA stock investments (i.e. for your regular trading account), which is exactly what I was looking for. For retirement savings, I would opt for TradeKing because their IRA accounts have no annual fee, zero inactivity fee, and $4.50 trades (I don’t trade much in my IRA, but when I do, I want it to be cheap). Worried about missing out on stock research? Use TradeKing for your IRA and use Zecco for non retirement stock trades. Convinced like I was? Join Zecco Trading and start getting your free trades!
Zecco Discussion:
- Which broker do you use? Why?
- Do you have any really good or really bad experiences with Zecco or another broker?
The website ads probably bring in an incredible amount. The investing niche is filled to the brim with advertisers. Investopedia.com claims that their private ad sales generate up to $48-80 cpm.
I’ll try out Zecco next. I’ve been playing with Trade King for a while.
I been with them for a while and extremely happy. You can not beat the Free Trades.
Zecco’s customer service has been great. I have e-mailed them several different questions and they’ve always gotten back to me the next day.
I trade with Wells Fargo. if you maintain $25,000 across all of your accounts you are eligible for a PMA package with no fees. The PMA comes with 100 free trades per account, which is pretty nice. So my wife and I get 300 free trades a year for our individual IRAs and our non-retirement brokerage account. The only drawback of course is reaching that initial $25k.
disclaimer: I work for Wells Fargo, but the PMA benefits are the same for everyone.
thanks for the review, I’ve been contemplating zecco for years but I was too skeptical to switch from e-trade. However, after reading through your experience I’m moving my money to zecco for 2009, thanks!
No minimum balance brokers like Zecco are great, and they breed loyalty. Eventually they will win out over the others just as small business is the heart of capitalism. To get consistent results in trading for people new to the game, sites like stockplease.com coupled with these brokers makes the playing field much more even.
I’m looking for another broker. I currently trade between 300 and 2,000
options daily (buy then sell). I have two accounts, TDAmeritrade and
ETrade. I need an alternative for ETrade because their executions are too
slow. When I enter market orders, I click “enter” on both, a split second
apart. The TD status shows “Executed” in seconds or maybe, for large orders
(>1,000 options), in three or four mouse click updates. ETrade always takes
longer, sometimes over a minute.
Since I typically buy in a rising prices and sell in a declining prices, I
get better execution prices on TD.
I should move the ETrade account to TD but I already have three accounts
there. If something goes wrong, like TD goes belly up, I could be SOL until
the SIPC settles.
So, based on how I trade, any recommendations on a broker?
TIA,
Pete
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