Comments on: Stock trade commissions declining, a buck a trade good for investors

By: Jude Stewart

Jude Stewart — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:56:59 +0000

Enjoyed your post, David. I dont know much about Sogo Invest personally, but I would offer this piece of advice after ten years working for various online brokerages: watch your executions and fees. There truly is no free lunch, and it is always best to know how your brokerage is making their financial ends meet.

$1 to $3 per trade makes me wonder if you are getting stiffed on execution quality – whether Sogo is working to get you the very best possible price in the marketplace. It is not worth saving $2 on an entire order if you are buying stock higher than you need to or selling lower than you could.

Even if execution quality is good, check out Sogo fees and pricing structure. No minimums sounds nice, but you may be hit by inactivity fees if you do not trade enough, or you may not qualify for their best-advertised price unless you hit certain trading frequencies or carry a certain balance.

I should mention that I work as a marketing consultant for TradeKing, so of course I would like you to check us out. Our Commissions + Fees page (https://www.tradeking.com/PrivateView/services/Services/commissions.tmpl) explains everything, and I think you will find it’s a refreshing fair and simple deal. I would also refer you to our CEO’s blog (http://bigdog.financialblogs.com), the first for any CEO in financial services. In a recent post he explained how TradeKing can work on just $4.95 per trade (http://bigdog.financialblogs.com/post/blog/how_do_we_do_it_for_495.html). If you know what goes into our low pricing, and what frills are getting cut, you can enter into a relationship with a broker with a lot more confidence about the quality of their services.

Good luck, and happy trading.

By: Vitaliy Melnyk

Vitaliy Melnyk — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 06:36:02 +0000

Do they offer real time trading charts ?

By: Jeannette

Jeannette — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:30:20 +0000

Do NOT use Sogo. When I opened my account, they held my funds hostage for 8 days, before I could even use it, despite using the ACH method to fund the account. Then, they started to test their ACH system, and WITHDREW funds from my bank account, which I did not authorize. They did replace it, after complaining. Today, I “purchased” a stock, and was prompted that the trade did not go through. I initiated the same trade again. Then according to my account, I had 2 trades that were pending. Hopefully, I was able to cancel the 2nd trade. However, it is now 5 and 1/2 hours later, and the first trade still cannot be reviewed. I do not even know what I paid for the stock. Their reply is that the system has been overloaded. After this length of time, you would think that the problem would be fixed. I have have numerous problems with them, but today was the worst. SOGO has got to GOGO!!!

By: TDavid

TDavid — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:01:14 +0000

Thanks for the feedback, Rob. I figure the fine print is out there somewhere.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:38:17 +0000

http://www.sogoinvest.com/sogo/Home/Pricing.aspx
The free monthly plan (Bronze) has $3* trades but..
” * For trades more than 5000 shares, the extra share more than 5000 share will be charge $0.005 per share.”