The Zecco UI and account screens continue to be unclear. I didn’t see anywhere in the trade section where these $4.50 trade commissions are being applied which prompted this post. In the account activity area it shows “principal amount” and then the “net amount” shows $4.50 less, so this must be where we are supposed to see the commission fees reflected (?). If you know of a better place to track the commissions than this, please reply in the comments.

How to locate the commission fees in Zecco
STEP 1. inside the Trading area choose “Account Records” along the left column.
STEP 2. choose “all activity” beneath the section.
STEP 3. select the “From Date” and “To Date” and click on “go” button in the account table cell.
STEP 4. you should see something like the snipped screenshot pictured above.

Why not just have a commission column that shows the amount charged for each buy/sell? Maybe Zecco will add that going forward. That would make more sense.

Recognizing a stock loss
As you can also see above, I just took my first stock loss trade at Zecco by selling Zarlink (ZL) which I bought 60 shares back on July 20 at $1.69 and sold today at a dismal $0.64/share. To add insult to injury, I paid my first $4.50 commission for the trade bringing the grand total of the loss to $66.90. Like buying a video game that is played once and shelved. Like filling up somebody else’s tank of gas.

I lost money.

Why did I take this loss instead of waiting for it (hopefully) to bounce back? I’d waited nearly six months already for ZL to do something besides go down and there is a looming threat of them being delisted. I’d rather suck up the loss and move onto something else. I turned right around and bought 6 shares of Shortel (SHOR) paying a second Zecco $4.50 commission. I already own SHOR shares through Sharebuilder (and paid $15.95 commission there, ouch!), so this adds to my holdings, only at a different online broker.

The impact of commissions in 2008 versus 2007
We’ve known the Zecco free ride on trades for those with balances under $2,500 was going to end in 2008 so this doesn’t come as a surprise.

I added a “fees” section to our stock competition Google Finance shared spreadsheet to reflect these $4.50 commissions per trade throughout the year. Even with the ZL loss and $9 in commissions, overall my stock competition portfolio is still +2.96%. I sold seven stocks in 2007 at a profit (GMO, BQI, ATAR, RSTO, MCZ, SIRI and SAPE) and 0 stocks at a loss, but I could (and time will tell if I should) have taken the ZL loss in 2007.

Of those stocks sold, 2 of 7 are currently showing higher than the amount sold: GMO which is at $11.50 and was sold at $8.05 and BQI which is at $4.19 and was sold at $3.67. On a percentage basis (5 of 7 = 71.4%), I’m happy to have sold when I did. This is a real world example of the uncertainty in the market that everybody is trying to time; buy low, sell high.

The last six months on the market have been rocky, so I’m not disappointed with the performance. If $4.50 commissions would have to have been paid on all of the 2007 trades, I’d be looking at an overall portfolio loss, so this will continue adding an additional wrinkle in 2008.

I covered some of this in my 2007 stock competition recap post, but at the time hadn’t done the following:

1. paid any commissions to Zecco
2. taken any losses on trades

Now I can clear both those off the table. Let’s hope #2 doesn’t happen very often in 2008. As I’m about to publish this, SHOR has lost 27 cents from what I paid for it already (dropping from $6.17 to $5.90). Argh, isn’t the stock market fun?

Did this post make you go hmm?

 Loading ...

• 2007 stock competition results and free real time stock quotes
• Picking stocks by name strategy
• Stock trade commissions declining, a buck a trade good for investors
• Zecco free trades going away, unless you have $2,500 minimum balance
• Clumsy Zecco interface, limited customer service, but yes they have free trades
• Sharebuilder rocks!