Free Trades from OptionsHouse

Along with a competitive flat rate of $3.95/stock trade, OptionsHouse is still offering 100 free stock trades for new signups. Guy’s this might be a limited time offer, so with the new rates you must hurry to sign up for a new account and the most out of their package. Remember, their flat rates apply to stock trades only, and for trading in options, spreads and other instruments they have a different pricing structure, which is surely hard to beat.

Open an account with OptionsHouse by following the link below or read more reviews to clear your doubts.

$3.95 Flat-Rate Stock Trades

OptionsHouse Editorial Review

How to choose your stock broker?

I know it’s a hard choice to finalize on a broker, and some find it tedious to manage multiple accounts, so you must compare product and pricing from leading online brokers and opt for the one which suits your trading style.

To begin with, you will have to navigate through a large number of reviews and compare latest promotions, as online broking industry is witnessing a lot of new competition. Although, it can become much easier if you are aware of your trading needs, whether you are an options trader or you simply want to deal in stock trades. Then, knowing how much you trade on a monthly basis will further help you in narrowing down the choices.

Cheapest Online Discount Broker

OptionsHouse is becoming one of the most popular online discount brokers and the reason is quite apparent. Apart from their flat fee charging policy and free 100 trades, their commissions on options trading (for which it is more popularly known, and in fact, named after that) are quite reasonable.  They charge 5 for $5 or $8.50 plus 0.15 per contract which is far better than what other online brokers charge. OptionsHouse is a venture of PEAK6 Investments, L.P., which is a renowned proprietary options trading firm.

OptionsHouse Rating & Ranking

Next, broker firms are time to time honored by surveys conducted by finance firms and media, particularly financial magazines. OptionsHouse has bagged a lot of such title and wards so far like the “Best For Options Traders” awarded by the Barron’s 2009 Online Broker and #1 Rating in Trade Experience, above distinguished brokers like OptionsXpress and ETrade.

Virtual Trading Services and Special Features

OptionsHouse has a wide palette of services and special features that add to the reasons for the company to make a difference. Their Virtual Trading Tool accessible to all members on signing up, though quite comparable to the one of OptionsXpress, is one of the most practical and helpful among all other instruments of various brokers.  Their Investment Platform is exceptionally convenient and well-suited for all types of traders. They have successfully tried to make it least distracting for the traders, letting them manage their transactions with an ease.

Investor Education Tools and Resources

Before I finish, their Tools and Education section is equipped with resourceful tools, calculators, screeners and simulators to help an active trader deal with their stock holdings in one of the most professional ways.  Time to time, they introduce trading guides, books, informative papers, webinars and various other learning tools to edify the traders with advanced trading and investing tips.

Who should opt for OptionHouse?

If you’re a newbie at investing and trading and feel like putting it through its paces, OptionsHouse is certainly not somewhere you should be! Perhaps, some others discount brokers online like Scottrade might be able to help you with their amateur-friendly gears. Nonetheless, OptionsHouse is a one-stop shop for those who have some experience in trading and are all geared up to soar the skies.  Their low cost commission structure and technical tools let you achieve a huge round of applause and then, sky isn’t the limit!

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Ever since Charles Schwab lowered their commission rates for online trading & other brokerage firms joined the bandwagon of cutting the brokerage fees, I have been wondering about this topic. Are we slowly moving towards converting the whole discount brokerage industry into a commodity market?

What is commodity Market?

The economic definition of commodity market is a truly capitalist market where there is perfect competition because of presence of hundreds of direct / indirect competitors. The profit margins of such industries is tending to zero. Everyone is a bulk producer. Typical examples of commodity market is the agricultural industry. There is no product differentiation or brand loyalty. The company who manufactures the component with the cheapest rates is the most profitable in the industry. A few other industries which are tending towards becoming commodity markets are Airline Industry and Automobile Industry. Such industries are often associated with massive price wars. The examples of which we see on TV everyday with several thousand dollars in cash backs on the latest car models. You got to stop and wonder what in the world is going on with the marketing heads in such companies. Well the answer is simple; due to the competition, if you do not lower your cost and not offer crazy deals to buyers, you are set to lose your market share.

What is the future for Brokerage Industry

Brokerage industry traditionally was very far from such a structure. Investors worked with a real person who made sure your wealth is in safe hands. But then started coming the power of technology. People were replaced by online platforms which could be used by investors for trading. Companies started developing new trading tools and faster platforms to establish brand presence. The last 5 years was such a period. If you look at the recent history over past few years, fastest growing brokerage firms have been started very very recently. Now these firms are posing a major threat to established organizations a lethal threat. This threat is no different than what Toyota and Honda did to US automakers in early 90s. They slow started and quickly ramped up to defeat them for the top position in terms of sales and consumer confidence.

Why is Brokerage Industry Heading towards Commodity Market

As technology grew further and wider almost all brokerage firms were offering the same high quality tools to everyone. So who is the winner? Now it seems pretty apparent that consumers started switching brokerage firms and went more for cheaper prices than brand loyalty because brand did not matter when all the product offering are all same. In my personal opinion, some of these new brokerage firms such as TradeKing, Zecco are breaking the rules and creating innovative platforms and leaving behind earlier market leaders such as Charles Schwab & Scottrade. The established players started seeing a drop in trading activities as people switched to new entrants. The initial offers were short teasers like open a bank account and get $100 free stock trades or 10 stock trades free every month. However in the latest price wars companies are slashing their prices left right and center.

Which brokerage firms are leading the movement

E-trade was the latest to join the price war by slashing the rates its charges its non frequent customers to $ 9.99 from $ 12.99. The wars began with Charles Schwab reducing its rates to $ 8.99 from $ 12.99 . Fidelity followed soon after by dropping rates to $ 7.95 from $ 8 to $19.99 pricing. This means that companies have reduced their revenues by as much as 30% in last one month. This is also reflective in their share prices. E-trade has dropped 17% and Charles Schwab has dropped 8% in last one month.

What does it mean for investors

This is hence the right time for consumers to look at the brokers which provide cheapest rates and open accounts with them. As we mentioning earlier, since the brokerage industry has become a commodity it does not matter if you open a particular brand. Go for the lowest rates. Tradeking, Zecco or Options House would be our recommendations.

1. OptionsHouse is currently running special ads for 100 Free Trades if you open your account before April 30th. On top of that, they are the cheapest as far as the commission rates go.

Get 100 Free Trades with OptionsHouse.com

2. TradeKing is the top Rated Broker by SmartMoney – 4 years running (2006-2009). It also got 4-Star Rated Broker by Barron’s – 12th Annual Survey of Best Browser-Based Online Brokers. All that is available for low flat fees – $4.95 per trade plus $.65 per options contract

Open an account with Trading King – Tradeking

3. Zecco:Best thing about Zecco is their 10 free trades every month if you make 25 trades in a month. Hence your effective rate actually becomes a lot lower than what they advertise which is 4.5$/trade. Their effective rate comes down to 2.70$ / trade, now who can beat that? See details below:

Trade with Zecco for Free

TD Ameritrade CEO Tomcyzk said today he does not plan to indulge in the price wars that its rivals Fidelity and Charles Schwab have entered into. First Charles Schwab reduced its trade from $ 12.95 a trade to $ 8.95 a trade. This was followed by Fidelity which used to charge anywhere between $8 and $19.99 to flat $ 7.95 per trade.

Broker Reviews 2011 Best Commissions and Fees in Stocks, Mutual Funds, ETFs and Options

The CEO of TD Ameritrade said that they would wait for the market to settle and then decide on what price to charge the consumers for trading. Their focus till then would be to provide great tools for RIA’s (Registered investment advisors) who would be trying independently to get large client for TD Ameritrade. TD Ameritrade plans to increase the assets invested through brokerage firm to $33 billion from $ 27 billion currently.

What it means for TD Ameritrade clients is probably they should look at alternatives like Tradeking or E-trade for opening brokerage services. TD Ameritrade is going upscale and changing its business model for people who have millions of dollars to invest. For millions of other people who do not have millions of dollars to invest a smaller brokerage firm like Options house or Tradeking might be useful. Details on popular offers from these firms are as following:

1. OptionsHouse is currently running special ads for 100 Free Trades if you open your account before April 30th. On top of that, they are the cheapest as far as the commission rates go.

Get 100 Free Trades with OptionsHouse.com

2. TradeKing is the top Rated Broker by SmartMoney – 4 years running (2006-2009). It also got 4-Star Rated Broker by Barron’s – 12th Annual Survey of Best Browser-Based Online Brokers. All that is available for low flat fees – $4.95 per trade plus $.65 per options contract

Open a TradeKing account

3. Zecco:Best thing about Zecco is their 10 free trades every month if you make 25 trades in a month. Hence your effective rate actually becomes a lot lower than what they advertise which is 4.5$/trade. Their effective rate comes down to 2.70$ / trade, now who can beat that? See details below:

Trade with Zecco for Free

Someone once asked me this trivia question. Read the question and think for a moment before reading further to get the answer.

Question: What is the best marketing keyword

What is your guess?

The answer is FREE, yes as soon as someone hears the word FREE, suddenly the offer becomes attractive. Today I am going to write about the stunt that OptionsHouse has pulled recently by offering 100 absolutely free trades to its customers. Yes you heard it right, FREE with no obligations. If you do not like OptionsHouse after you have maxed out your first 100 trades, simply move on! From what I hear, OptionsHouse is doing an excellent job at retaining customers also. So chances are you will continue to stick with them. Details of the offer are as below:

Open an account with Options house before April 30th 2010 and get 100 commission free trades. This a perfect account to open if you want to learn the basic techniques on how to trade. This offer is valid for not only buying stocks but also on buying options, mutual funds or IRA accounts. OptionsHouse provides excellent customer service and have the lowest long term rates also.

For example a single trade it costs you $ 4.95 to execute with Tradeking. However if you are trading with OptionsHouse, it only requires $ 2.95 to execute on Options House. Both these rates are much lower than $ 7.95 of Fidelity.com, $8.95 for Charles Schwab and $9.95 for Etrade. Similarly doing 5 contracts cost you just $5 on Options House compared to $ 14.95 on Options Xpress.

So what are you waiting for try out this great new brokerage firm which is revolutionizing the rates in the industry. Till date our customers have not reported any problems to us from the website but if you happen to find any. Please let us know. Leave a comment here so it can help other investors like you. For opening an account with OptionsHouse, please click the following link:

Get 100 Commission-Free Trades at OptionsHouse.com!

Happy weekend everyone!

I have been a regular investor for past 4.5 years. I still consider myself as a medium level investor, still have a 8-5 job but I am working towards my retirement. Goal is to become financially independent by 2012 (if the world doesn’t come to an end by then, I will be able to retire and live a modest life with the investment money).

Over my several years of experience of investing, I have realized the two most important things you require from your brokerage firms are :

1. Availability of data / information: It means how a particular stock is performing relative to the market. Is the stock overpriced, underpriced? Are the rating agencies recommending to hold, sell or buy a particular stock? Another aspect of the information you should be interested in is the market trend and industry vertical analysis. You want to balance your portfolio by investing in diverse sectors to minimize the risk.

1. Ability to perform trades anywhere and anytime: As we all understand investment opportunities sometimes vanish away in seconds. The ability to have access to all the data and be able to trade at lightning speeds is very important when you want to make choices of an intelligent investor.

ETrade was always highly regarded for making the information available to its customers with little to no delay. Recently they have started focusing on upgrading their trading tools and using latest technology to help customers in trading. Their new trading tools can help you analyze through tons of data very quickly and help you make your decision of the stock you want to invest in.

Their latest offering makes them pioneer on the second requirement as well, i.e. ability to trade on the go. ETrade now offers a blackberry access to ETrade Mobile Pro when you open a new account with them. The blackberry offers you access to internet almost anywhere and the Mobile platform allows you to trade any location and at any time

Investment in stocks is not an easy thing and is not for everybody but with the latest offering eTrade is enabling it to be much simpler for a common man.

Read more reviews about ETrade at Etrade Stock Broker Reviews. To get more information about ETrade, please visit ETrade Accounts

Warren Buffett does not readily disclose the investments he makes on behalf of himself or Berkshire Hathaway. He does, every year, report on the substantial holdings of his company in other corporations. These provide only tiny clues however to why, when and where he invests.

Stock investments should be looked at in the same way as buying a business. The stock investor is really buying a tiny share or partnership and should apply the same principles that they would in buying a business. According to Warren Buffett, the below are the principles for sound investments strategies.

1. Do not follow the crowd. Ignore the market, the crowd, and its fashions.
2. Have fixed investment principles.
3. Do not put your eggs in many baskets. Put all your eggs in one basket  and proceed to watch that basket.
4. Do not rely on outside analysis. Do your own research and do it thoroughly.
5. Do not often act on a hunch. Always have sound, well-argued, well-researched reasons for your investments.
6. Do not place small amounts in each basket. Only buy if you are prepared to put at least 10% of your net worth into the stock.
7. Do not watch the market intently. Do not switch holdings frequently. Expect to hold your investments for ever. Do not avoid holding cash.

Additionally, the references could be made to below mentioned principles.

1. The company should be soundly managed. Tests of good management include:
   • Share buybacks
   • Good use of retained earnings
   • Sticking to what you know
2. The company has demonstrated earning capacity with a likelihood that this will continue. Tests of earning capacity include:
   • Company growth
   • Dealing with inflation
   • Capital expenditure
   • Look through earnings
   • Brand names
3. The company should have consistently high returns. Warren Buffett would look at both:
   • Returns on equity
   • Returns on capital
4. The company should have a prudent approach to debt.
5. The businesses of the company should be simple and the investor should have an understanding of the company.
6. Assuming that all these thresholds are satisfied, the investment should only be made at a reasonable price, with a margin of safety. This is always a matter for independent judgment by the investor but it is relevant to consider:
   • Price/earnings ratios
   • Earnings and Dividend yields
   • Book value
   • Comparative rates of return
7. Investors need to take a long term approach.

Some Books Recommended by Warren Buffet for investment

There are books that tell you in-depth about strategies developed by Warren Buffet. Then there are those books that are recommended by the man, Warren Buffet himself. Here are some of those: Take on the Street: by Arthur Levitt Levitt. He served as the Securities and Exchange Commissions chairman for the longest term. Levitt tells you about the tactics developed by the Wall Street money hoarders in simple and direct language, then tells you how to make your way through them. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: by John C. Bogle. He has filled all the pages of the book with deep insights and practical advice. The book tells you investment is not easy, as it requires discipline and patience, at the same time it’s all about common sense.

Buffett, whose investment strategies and techniques are still regarded by most as the best and most successful ever, was not spared from the recent global financial crisis. Weighed down by losses from investments and derivative bets, his investment arm Berkshire Hathaway posted a net loss of US$1.53bil (RM5.43bil)  its worst loss in at least two decades  for the quarter to March 31, compared with a profit of US$940mil in the same period a year ago. But the company returned to the black with a second-quarter profit of US$3.29bil on improved stock markets and credit derivative gains.