Last month, ING Direct acquired ShareBuilder, a discount online brokerage. The two companies seem to make a good pair, so I think it was a good move for the company.
ShareBuilder has now lowered the commission charged for real-time trades to $9.95. Automatic investments, orders which are grouped together with many customers and executed as many as 7 days later, are still $4. Low prices make dabbling in the stock market more appealing to novices. Lower prices are always welcome, but is this a good thing? Personally, I’ll stick with my buy-and-hold strategy and wide diversification among stocks.
A few years ago, ShareBuilder was offering sign-up bonuses, so I used some free money to buy an ETF and two stocks, IYZ, MSFT, and AKAM. I can’t say that any one of these options has shown stellar performance since I placed the orders. This “play money” is only a small fraction of my investments.
Updated October 7, 2011 and originally published December 18, 2007. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I may actually start using my Sharebuilder account again since they’ve lowered commissions.
That’s a good move. My only problem with Sharebuilder has been that they encourage small investments and a $4 charge on $100 or less is quite large.
Even at $9.95 it’s tough to swallow unless you’re placing large orders. Like Eden said – investing $100 or $200 at a time doesn’t make any sense if 5-10% of your money is instantly eaten by commissions. And of course you get to pay again when it’s time to sell – making it even tougher to swallow.
no-load Mutual funds are the way to go for small investors, I think. At least until you have enough to buy larger amounts of individual stock.