Online Stock Broker Commissions

This month I’ve made 4 round trip trades (4 buys & 4 sells) which equals out to 8 total trades. I’m using Ameritrade right now and they charge $9.95 per trade. That can add up. That means this month I’ve spent $79.60 on commissions and that has taken a nice (or not so nice) chunk out of my profits.

If the money spent on commissions on my trades this month was added back to my account that would put me up 9.8% which is pretty darn good especially considering how bad my timing has been on my sales. But when you include the commissions that brings my overall return this month down to 6.6%.

Yes 6.6% is still a good return for one month and if I can make 6.6% return every month that would certainly add up but it’s hard not to feel like the commissions aren’t taking a big bite out of my return.

This is the big reason I’m trying to move at least some of my trading over to SogoTrade. They only have $3 commissions for each trade.

But there are some important negatives to consider with SogoTrade. The first being that I’m having a hard time getting my account approved. They have a really annoying process for approving new accounts (far less easy to deal with than Ameritrade) and I still haven’t been able to actually get money into my SogoTrade account to start trading.

Then there’s the fine print. Yes they have $3 trades usually but if the stock is under $1 (which many of my plays are) then there’s a whole lot of additional fees. That’s why I plan on using my Ameritrade account for stocks under $1 (because they have a flat fee of $9.95 on all trades) and SogoTrade on stocks over $1.

Also, SogoTrade doesn’t have premarket or aftermarket trading available at their $3 per trade price. I believe they have it available for their “elite” service but then everything is more expensive anyway.