If you’re a long-time reader of Consumerism Commentary, you may remember that I earned over $175 in bonuses over a year ago by using a number of promotional offers for opening accounts at ShareBuilder. I used the bonus money to invest in IYZ, MSFT and AKAM, all of which have not performed particularly well.
Now that ING Direct has acquired ShareBuilder, they’re bringing back the $50 bonus. Simply open a new account. When you are prompted for a promotion code, use SHARE50. As always, there is fine print:
You must open a new ShareBuilder Account and purchase at least one security to receive this offer. Please note the $50 credit will post to your account approximately 4 weeks after the first transaction executes. Not valid with IRA or Education Savings Accounts. Not valid with any other offers. Valid only for first time account holders with ShareBuilder. ShareBuilder reserves the right to terminate this offer at any time.
Note the bold print above. In the past, current account holders could open multiple accounts and apply bonuses to each, but this type of activity seems to be curtailed by New Management.
If you take the approach I did, this bonus is basically free money for purchasing a stock or ETF. For each bonus I received, I picked one of the three investments I mentioned above, and invested my own money to start, but not more than the bonus amount. Once I received the bonus in my ShareBuilder account, I withdrew the amount and deposited it back into savings.
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Sharebuilder is particularly good for newbies since they provide pretty decent tutorials.
Watch out for those fees! any transaction you make will cost you at least $4, so if you are going to use Sharebuilder for recurring monthly investments, it can definitely be expensive if you make more frequent, small transactions, rather than saving up and doing one large lump sum transaction.
That being said, I used the Promos at sharebuilder for myself, my wife and a custodial account for our daughter. I invested in AAPL and GOOG, and they’ve both done fairly well since then!
You always have to look out for fees. I was sure to invest $4 less than the bonus amounts to ensure I wasn’t using my “own” money to pay for the transaction fee. That doesn’t take care of what it will cost to sell.
It appears that you’ll have to pay $9.95 to sell down the road. If you want to transfer your holdings out of ShareBuilder without selling, the fee is $50.
I earned about $350 in bonuses from Sharebuilder last year. In the meantime, we had another child. .. might try for another $50.
Thanks for this! I’ve been thinking about opening an account with them and this is the motivation I needed. :)
Stay away from technology stocks and take on some of the financial stocks that have taken a beating such as countrywide, wamu and citibank (after they announce their next writedown).