Does anyone use Sharebuilder?

[JT914]

Does anyone use Sharebuilder ?
I know there is cheaper but I do like the user friendly features as It is easy for the new online trader, but my question is why would a stock have a stock grade of D (weak) but in analyst section be a strong buy (1.0) confusing.

[brianlarsen45]

I have have an account with sharebuilder and wasn't to thrilled with the service. Join sogoinvest.com. It will do everything sharebuilder will do for much cheaper.

[JT914]

Thanks for the info,
Its not an issue with price, I'm comfortable with sharebuilder and I like the research tools available with the advance package not to mention the automatic investment plan for my retirement fundage.
Just don't understand the rating difference between analyst and stock grade.









REMEMBER SOMETIMES A GOOD DEAL IS NOT ALWAYS A GOOD DEAL!

[JT914]

I checked that out and it looks pretty good.
Thanks Brianlarsen45

[noobtrader]

When I first started to invest i used sharebuilder also but then moved on to Etrade and now with USAA. Sharebuilder is excellent for the new investor but the thing I didnt like about them was you could only transfer on certain days and stuff and the money took forever to get there so you cant really buy and sell quickly.

Now about the stocks...Sharebuilder has a set portfolio that they will only offer stocks that meet their criteria so some stocks you wont be able to buy because of their P/E or Beta and so on and so forth.

[timsuha]

anyone have a referral code they want credit for for sogo invest or a promo code? I am gonna transfer my sharebuilder there.

[Kitara_77]

I use sharebuilder for my long term investments. I really like it. The money that isn't tied up in investments, gets a good return in their money market account. You get interest paid on it monthly. The current 7 day yield is around 4 1/2%.
I didn't see anything like that for sogoinvest.com. Do they have something similar?

[brianlarsen45]

I use sharebuilder for my long term investments. I really like it. The money that isn't tied up in investments, gets a good return in their money market account. You get interest paid on it monthly. The current 7 day yield is around 4 1/2%.
I didn't see anything like that for sogoinvest.com. Do they have something similar?

Sorry , no they do not. I was referencing sogoinvest for just trading purposes, expecting that you would have your money in the game most of the time!

Also Sharebuilder has Roth IRA's and sogo does not. I should of been more specific in my previous post, but I was basically looking through the eyes of someone just interested in trading stocks. Sharebuilder is geared more towards retirement investing through ETF's. Sogo would be good if you are only interest in trading stocks. Although I think they have IRA's coming soon.

[brianlarsen45]

I checked that out and it looks pretty good.
Thanks Brianlarsen45

No problem! You really can't beat the commission price!! That's the main reason I like it! SO if you have a limited amount of money to invest you can still play in stocks because the commissions will not eat u up!

[travis2819]

The 4.5% on the money market account, does that mean you recieve 4.5% of your total every month? how does that work?

[timsuha]

4.5%apy = 4.5% all year, meaning 4.5% divided by 365 each day or divided by 52 each week or 4.5% divided by 12 for months. I think it capitalizes monthly actually.

[clavocat]

how bout people educate themselves? look at tradestation or cybertrader- buck a share, if anyone has looked at tradestation its by FAR the best broker/platform u could EVER want, it will trade for you, and you can go back to bed or go eat while ur making or losing money lol...plus u can backtest your system, ive seen almost every platform out there and TS is amazing. sharebuilder prolly has a crappy platform but thats one i havent looked at.

[Kitara_77]

Tradestation is pretty awesome, no doubt about it. But it's pricey unless you're a more active trader. I've never looked at cybertrader. I may have to check that one out.
Sharebuilder pays out a dividend monthly on their money market account. Right now the 7 day yeild is 4.49%. It's better than my bank savings account, but keep in mind too that this money isn't insured by the FDIC. So, it really is an investment that comes with risk, but the reward right now is worth it. For example, I have a custodial account that has around a 4K balance and its dividend payout this month was 14.35. Not bad, and it'll sit there until I decide how to better invest it.
As far as the platform goes...well, there isn't too much of one. It really is more for investing, not trading. I use Scottrade for my swing trades and sharebuilder just for my etfs and long term dividend paying stocks.
If you're going to trade, and not just invest, I'd go with something else.

[aiki14]

I got the tradestation test drive last year, it is amazing in it's capabilities, especially backtesting, but at the time they weren't able to trade through E*Trade or Merrill. I believe they are up to that now. They were around $1200 I think plus a monthly charge plus whatever your broker charged. Great for program trading and you can program it in trading language. Active Trader Magazine always has algorithms you can program for it.

[clavocat]

aiki why not get tradestation it costs 20 bux for all ur fees then 250 a month or 150 a month, UNLESS you trade 5000 shares a month, in that case, trade 2500 shares of a stock, gain a penny and get out, then just use it for the things you want...if i dont meet the requirements im buying 1000 shares and selling them the next second for a penny or 2 penny loss/gain, cost me 20 bux plus commissions but i wont have that 150 dollar fee or w.e it is.

[clavocat]

I got the tradestation test drive last year, it is amazing in it's capabilities, especially backtesting, but at the time they weren't able to trade through E*Trade or Merrill. I believe they are up to that now. They were around $1200 I think plus a monthly charge plus whatever your broker charged. Great for program trading and you can program it in trading language. Active Trader Magazine always has algorithms you can program for it.

is that good magazine?? and it give u scenarios on what to program to make good cash on the program trading?? thats sweet, tell me more about that mag. and why dont more people program trade??? its as easy money as it gets, plus you can test to see how u are "projected" to do.

[aiki14]

is that good magazine?? and it give u scenarios on what to program to make good cash on the program trading?? thats sweet, tell me more about that mag. and why dont more people program trade??? its as easy money as it gets, plus you can test to see how u are "projected" to do.

I like it, lots of good info, fairly high tech. $100 gets you 2 years
www.activetradermag.com

Another good one is Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities" magazine. I gave away the little subscription card so I forget how much it cost me, cover price is $5
www.traders.com

[clavocat]

is program trading bad?

[aiki14]

is program trading bad?

No, It actually represents a significant percentage of both institutional and hedge fund trading. Some of the big hedge funds are "Black Box" or proprietary algorithm traders. In a sense anyone who uses tech analysis is a program trader, the more disciplined the closer they follow a "program".

[aiki14]

Clav, Here's an interesting article from Slate Magazine on Program trading.
http://www.slate.com/id/2112392/

[clavocat]

good article, why dont you use tradestation and program trade? im going to start soon, im sure i can do 30% or better with backtesting.

[bahroor]

Chris, explain backtesting... what do you mean? can you give an example?

[clavocat]

ya bahroor, say u like the 20ma with the 50ma, so you take the program type in when the 20ma goes over the 50 i want to buy and when it goes back over i wanna sell and then short then u test it over the last 1yr, 5yr or 20yr w.e u want on ANY stock and thats the backtesting part, so what this does is you can see how much you would have made by trading on those technical parameters, you can also choose any other parameters like buy when the MACD fast line crosses the slow and etc. this is awesome and as a result you can see over the last say year what MSFT would have made you or lost you, and you can throw in a stop loss, then you can see ur best trade, worst trade, #of winning trades and losing trades and a whole sheet on what WOULD have happend, now u figure its a good process so you do it in real time and let tradestation trade for you on those parameters and thats program trading which you know. that help, he did a test on buy and selling on the bollinger bands on SPY and he made 20% last year and traded 300 times, on 100 shares he netted like 3700- 300 on commissions...i know it sounds too good to be true but its not, its the best technology for trading that ive ever seen. then you can pick which stop loss would be the best or which macd slow line numbers would be the best or anything you want, you can let it day trade for you, swing trade or coretrade, its amazing. hope this helps.

[brianlarsen45]

The 4.5% on the money market account, does that mean you recieve 4.5% of your total every month? how does that work?
4.5% is the annual return, but they pay it monthly!! So if you had $1000 dollars you would get $45 total return over 12 months. so about $4.00 a month!

If they payed that monthly no one would own stocks...lol8O