Comments on: ING ShareBuilder Review

By: James

James — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:41:01 +0000

I had an Orange Account and closed it … no problems … My father passed away and had a ShareBuilder account … that was a whole different story … WOW, the Registered Reps were clueless and didn’t help me transfer the account. I was a Registered Representative for another company for almost 8 years and I was shocked of their incompetence … good luck getting a 1099 Div or any other tax documents if you invest … I’ll stick with E Trade

By: Lyn

Lyn — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 23:18:44 +0000

I have a Sharebuilder account and also a Scottrade account. I love both of these brokerages. I use Sharebuilder of rmy Tuesday dividend stock buys and Scottrade I buyother stocks the rest of the week. I have never had any troubles with either broker. I have a “NEW” scottrade referral code that will get you 3 free trades if you want to open any type of account at Scottrade and do what I’m doing. I have done this for about 10 years, and have done well. I never want all my money at just one brokerage.

Scottrade referral code: IXFV9382

3 Free trades when you open a Scottrade account.

Lyn

By: Michael Cannon

Michael Cannon — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:31:40 +0000

I’m frustrated with ShareBuilder now.

I can get money into my account and perform trades, but do anything like sell to move the funds back to savings is nearly impossible. I’ve been trying for over 2 weeks and all I get is bunch of error messages. Even when trying to send a simple email contact form.

For the actual trades themselves, while Sharebuilder is slow about it, taking a business day or two, getting them setup to be done is pretty painless.

I’m getting charged fees though on no load mutual funds for transactions when the trades were going in as free trades.

At this point, I can’t recommend Sharebuilder and if I could get my money out in a timely manner would go back to USAA for trading.

I hope Sharebuilder sees this as I’d like to be happy, positive experience customer for them, but I can’t even get a hold of them. Ah, the fun of living overseas out of normal US business hours.

Michael

By: skylog

skylog — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:25:57 +0000

i used it years ago when i just started out. if for no other reason than it got me started, i will think of it as a good service. while the cost of trading is too high, in my mind, if it is done right, it can be a solid service.

that said, i love that they were acquired by ing direct. already having an account with them, the ability to transfer funds between accounts is great. still, i had not used sharebuilder in years until last year. i was able to get a $76 promotion and a ton of free trade credits so i went with it to make some regular purchases i wanted to make. it has been great. i am looking forward to the site upcoming site upgrade and better integration with ing direct.

my only concern is the fact that ing direct is for sale by ing and will be sold by 2013. this has me worried.

By: cubiclegeoff

cubiclegeoff — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:55:21 +0000

I use it because I opened an account, bought some stocks, and haven’t changed anything. I originally liked it because it was really easy to reinvest dividends, since you don’t have to have whole shares (unless you do a market purchase). I still use them occasionally, but it’s only for play money, not my major accounts. And I prefer to wait for deals that give me free trades.

By: Robert @ The College Investor

Robert @ The College Investor — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 04:29:05 +0000

Sharebuilder was the first company I used about 5 years ago. I really like it for long term investing, and it’s $4 trades make it so cheap to do so. Now with ING, they also have a lot of great research tools available. It is overall a pretty good brokerage.

By: The Latter-day Saver

The Latter-day Saver — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:31:37 +0000

I like Sharebuilder alot. I snagged a bunch of free trades (real-time and automatic investment credits) a few months ago that let me reorganize my portfolio for free (I bet if someone googled for the codes, they might still work). I like that they do dividend reinvestment, too.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:09:22 +0000

When I signed up for a Sharebuilder account last summer, I found that I could only sell my investment(s) via real-time trade. Maybe I misunderstood or maybe it’s changed since then. Still, it actually makes sharebuilder right in line with other discount brokerages, if you buy and sell a single lot of shares. Other places would be $7 in and $7 out. Sharebuilder would be $4 in and $10 out. Granted, most of us probably buy more lots than we sell. But at the same time, most of us should be investing in broad index funds, for which we should be paying zero commissions.

By: Flexo

Flexo — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:09:10 +0000

I can’t argue with that. These fees cut far too much into the (potential) profit margin on small trades. I like the concept of using a company’s “bonus money” to cover the cost, though, so take advantage of bonus offers.

By: Tony

Tony — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:36:20 +0000

I wouldn’t recomend making such a small trade ($100) on any brokerage company. To be cost efficient the minimum trade on most brokerages has to be at least $2000 so the $20 comission you pay ($10 to buy + $10 to sell) represents only 1% of the total amount you are risking. If you can only risk $100 at a time you are better off doing dollar cost average into an index fund with a mutual fund company like Vanguard.

By: Ceecee

Ceecee — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:07:09 +0000

I appreciate this review as I often get solicitations from ING to open a Sharebuilder account. Other discount brokerages like TDAmeritrade also have that tricky $75 fee for transferring your account. It is paramount to get cheap trading fees when your purchases are on the small side. I’ve gotten to the point where if I can’t buy 100 shares of something, I just don’t buy. The buy/sell fees eat up any profit.