E-Trade Brokerage Review
E-Trade is arguably the most popular and well known online discount stock brokerages. Boasting over 4000 employees and having a net income over 600 million dollars per year (2006), E-Trade clearly is sitting high on the list of top online brokerages. I personally use E-Trade for all of my investment needs and do recommend it to anyone who is considering opening an account with an online stock broker. Here is how it E-Trade ranks among their competition:
Site Layout – 4 out of 5
E-Trade’s site layout is effective, intuitive, professional, and easy on the eyes. Compared to some of the other online stock brokers I’ve used in the past, E-Trade easily ranks the highest in this category. Finding my portfolio’s allocation is just as easy as finding quotes for a stock.
Tools – 3 out of 5
E-Trade has powerful and easy use tools for just about everything you’d need as an investor. It has fully customizable market and trading platforms, along with other useful tools such as asset allocation, account performance, income estimator, risk estimator, and more. The only complaint I have is that some of their more effective and desired tools are not free to users unless you pay a fee or have a minimum numbers of trades per quarter.
Security – 5 out of 5
E-Trade really sets itself apart from its competitors because they offer a free SecurID product to ensure that your account stays in your protected and in your possession at all times. I love the SecurID product, it’s extremely easy to use, creates an incredibly strong second layer of protection on my account, and of course it was free thanks to E-Trade. This feature alone is enough for me to stay with E-Trade, because I like sleeping at night knowing that I have added protection on my account.
Customer Service – 5 out of 5
E-Trade’s customer service is extremely good, especially in a time where most customer service departments are full of outsourced employees who are reading off a page of specified things to say. Customer service employees are friendly, knowledgeable, and extremely helpful. I’ve made countless numbers of calls to their customer service phone number and had my questions and issues resolved instantly. In fact, E-Trade was recognized for outstanding customer service in 2007 by Smart Money (a financial magazine).
Commission Fees - 2 out of 5
This is really the only downside to E-Trade. With E-Trade your commission fees are higher than most online discount brokerages unless you make a minimum number of trades per quarter. I tend to overlook this part of E-Trade as it is obvious that the higher commission fee is definitely worth what I get in return compared to other brokerages.
Overall – 4 out of 5
E-Trade is a great online discount brokerage, and I truly believe E-Trade leads the industry with their superior tools, outstanding customer service, and ease of use for investors. Their commission fees are definitely higher than their competition, but if you want the best, you should expect to pay a little more than usual.
[...] I was able to avoid two stock market corrections in 2007. Here is a picture I took off my E-Trade account showing my performance versus the S&P 500. Note the stock market corrections that [...]
I DO NOT recommend E*Trade for stock trading! E*Trade will take money from your account without you knowing. I have a STOCK account with E*Trade and have been sitting on just a few stocks for a couple of years. I am not receiving any service from them, yet I just found out I’ve been charged a $40 “Account Services Fee” every three months for the past year and a half just for having an account with them! I wasn’t charged anything when I first signed on so I thought it was a great way for me to try investing without the help of a broker and to do it for free. I was so wrong! They never even notified me that they were going to start charging me. It wasn’t showing it on my account summary or transactions page. I didn’t receive a phone call from them, nor did I receive an email alert mentioning that I was being charged a penny. I wouldn’t mind paying $40 on occasion if I were investing a lot of money and needing the advice of a qualified broker, but to be charged $40 every 3 months for holding less than 30 shares in a couple of companies that I picked by myself is ludicrous! There is no cap to these fees either. It now shows I have a negative balance! Unless you are a day-trader, I think E*Trade is a horrible recommendation to anyone. I wish I had paid more attention to the complaints than the praises like I see here before I opened an account with them.
Sorry to hear that Dana. With Etrade, the more active you are (buying,selling,etc) the less they charge you. I get lots of free services that you normally would have to pay for.
I completely agree with Dana, having had the same experience myself. If you are a smaller trader, do NOT go with Etrade. ScottTrade might be a better choice, though I need to do more research there as well. It’s $13 a trade, not the lower fees they advertise on TV. This means you need a gain of $26 on every transaction–no small thing for someone trading in small quantities–just to cover their fees.
Of course, this inhibits trading–it’s not worth it. But, if you don’t trade, you are charged $40 a quarter. Outrageous and simply not worth it. Even the mostly positive review above notes these high fees, though they are treated as an afterthought.
Bottom line, smaller investors should not choose Etrade.
I deposited $2,000.00 in 2006 in an etrade brokerage account and purchased a stock for around $1,987.00. Unbeknown to me $40.00 per quarter in fees were accruing, taking me into a margin debit that also accrued interest fees. I would log-on monthly to view my account and the account value would only show my stock value–no reference at all to fees accruing or margin balance. I sold the stock for $2,400.00 and they mailed me a check for $1,936.00. Thereafter I received a paper statement showing a net account value of $224.00. So I called inquiring about that balance and they say I owe them $1,600.00!!!!!! They say the check for $1,936.00 was a mistake and should never have been mailed it to me. I never borrowed on margin to purchase stocks–so what kind of gorilla math is this? I’m now waiting for them to research my transaction history to justify that claim–minimum 24 hours. They will not let you speak to a manager or anyone without an accent. sleazetrade is the absolute worst brokerage–period.
I agree — stay away from eTrade if you want to hang on to your money. Their ever-changing fees are outrageous. Finally, fed up, I called to close my account. I was left speechless when I was informed there would be a $10 fee to issue a check. Incredible!
I totally agree with the above opinions!
e-scan has completely drained my account with their $40/quarter fees.
They charged $160 /year for the “service” of taking your investment away from you gradually.
What’s worse is this done by the accumulation of the fees and then the sale of your stocks and closure of your account to “pay for the great service” they provide. Not only do you have to pay the ridiculos lack of service fees, but worse you also loose your stocks!
etrade is HORRIBLE where it counts. Their commissions are really high and they have a TON of hidden fees. They charge you $25 to transfer money electronically to your bank account. They also have atarted charging inactivity fees. I decided to leave etrade after they charged me a $20 reorganization fee and billed an account I set up for my son $80 for inactivity (over half of the value of the account). Now its costing me another $120 just to get my money away from these crooks. I called them and just got the “tough s**t” response. They have $225 of my money that they shouldn’t have. Take your business somewhere else, these people are thieves.
Don’t use etrade. We have problems with them too. I left my 100k in the account and we can’t get the money out of the brokerage account. They use all excuses not to let you wire the money. They said that they gave you a good rate but that is only for 2 months. After 2 months, you got nothing and will have problems to get your money out. We have accounts with different companies. Etrade is the worst.
Etrade rips you off on $20 Reorg fees. Is pure profit for them. Why charge more than a trade?
Thank God I googled e-trade to read up on them before getting started in online investing. I am going to research opinions on EVERY online stock trader sight before I even think about trying to invest the money I’ve worked hard for. You’d expect to see some good feedback on a company that is suppose to be so good to customers. I only saw one on this forum. It’s great that it’s working out for Adam but it sucks for the rest of you that have lost money. You’ve helped me in my decission making and I hopefully your next experiences in online investing will be better. If I find horror stories like these in the other online services then I guess I’ll try a different venue for getting started in stock investing.
I was hoping to find a way to reverse 5 (FIVE) years of inactivity fees which they started charging me once I turned off paper statements. If I had been getting a paper statement I would have done whatever it took to stop these exorbitant fees. I only had 2 stocks with $2000 in the account and actually forgot about them until I wanted to transfer them to another brokerage account. They have been stealing all of my cash dividends which I have been paying taxes on for five years and STILL charging me $40 a quarter for an Inactivity Fee!
Now before I can transfer these stocks I have to pay over $800 in Inactivity Fees and $60 to transfer and close the account.
A lot of the comments above are spot on. To my dismay I recently realized that I have been charged $40 per quarter in inactivity fees (for a total of almost $280 now). It is partly my own fault for not keeping up with my account, but nevertheless it’s ridiculous because they charge these fees for doing nothing. What’s even more frustrating to me is that at the time I opened my account you could avoid these inactivity fees by opening a linked savings account with E-Trade, which is what I did. I did not need this account and don’t use it. I simply opened it and put some money in it for the specific purpose of avoiding the $40 per quarter inactivity fee. It seems that while I have not been using the account their policies have changed and they started charging me. This is absolutely infuriating and I am looking for alternatives. They have refused to issue a refund even as a one time courtesy and I’m now in the process of closing my account with $280 of my money flushed down the toilet. Apparently they don’t mind losing young investors who are just starting out as customers as long as they can make a few bucks now. Very shortsighted policy.
[...] The Investors Journal- The site hasn’t been updated in some time, but Adam’s review is unique and insightful. He gave E*trade a 4/5 on site layout, 3/5 on tools, 5/5 on security, 5/5 on customer service, 2/5 on commission fees, and 4/5 overall. [...]
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