Beginning Online Investing

The first stock I purchased was Frontline Ltd(FRO). It is heaven-sent to the dividend investor. It pays out around $5-6 a share in dividends a year which adds up to a yeild of over 10%.

I am back again. This time I have an approved account at zecco.com. I needed to apply again but luckily there now is no need to sign and send in papers. It is all done digitally and it only takes a couple minutes. I was approved the next day. I am now waiting for my bank accounts to get approved so that I can fund my account. Since I last applied zecco has lowered their minimum deposit for free trades to $0. You could deposit a couple cents and buy a single share of a penny stock if you wanted. I am going to start off with a thousand and go from there.I am hoping to stick to stocks under $20 but if I find something I like I will jump on it no matter the price. Let me know if you have any suggestions. I have been reading a lot of threads in the zecco forums and picking up on a bunch of things. I'll post a little of what I learned later.

I know many other trading sites have tried the zero commission route and it didn't work out. Hopefully zecco can survive. It will be hard to start charging commission when your name in fact stands for zero commission!

I got the needed papers that require my signature and an attached photocopy of a government issued ID. If anyone else is planning on opening an account, MAKE SURE TO PRINT THE APPLICATION OR ATLEAST SAVE THE DRAFT SOMEWHERE. It is kind of confusing to me why they don't have the application freely available to print. Anyway, I am going to send this in tomorrow and hopefully my account is ready for deposits by the end of the week. I have been doing a little research and have a couple of different funds/stocks in mind. Any recommendations of funds that you may own or have interest in would be greatly appreciated. Right now I am open to many different possibilities.

Also, I am looking at starting an online savings account at HSBC. Does anyone know of any bonuses available for opening up an account. Are there referral bonuses? If so, leave a comment with your email and I will contact you.

It is Thursday, a week later, and I still have yet to get a letter from zecco.com. meanwhile I am beginning to set up my Roth IRA. I currently have a 401k through work but I plan on being in a much higher tax bracket at retirement age, so I believe a Roth IRA is a good option for me right now.

I got an email today and actually got a hold of a customer service representative that is sending me the required written application that requires a signature and a copy of a government id. Hopefully by next time I will be ready to start trading.

I recently got back into the swing of things and started getting some more motivation to get this all started. I did a little research on some possible trading sites. I wanted a site that was cheap and supported the beginner and I think I may have found a winner.

I came upon zecco.com. The main thing that attracted me was the fact that they offer no fees (trading or commission) on stock and EFT trades. This is as long as your account keeps an overall value of $2,500. There are fees on certain mutual funds and bonds but still these fees are lower than most that I have seen.

The only problem is that zecco.com is only a couple of months old. It launched some time around October of 2006. I have read some reviews that went both ways recognizing some bugs in the interface which isn't surprising considering it just launched, but this is something that needs to be taken into account. Some other concerns of mine were customer service and it seems that zecco.com lacks here too. I tried calling today because I could not find an application that I needed to sign and fax in, and didn't get a hold of anyone. It also seems as they do not have an answering machine service, once I got the system to send me to the customer service personnel, the phone just kept ringing. After about 5-10 minutes I got fed up and just sent them an email. I hope to get one back sometime early tomorrow.

I have read that a lot of different online trading sites have tried the free trading strategy and it just didn't work out. It makes me wonder if this just isn't a stunt to gain customers.

I am still a little skeptical about the whole thing, but I mostly think that is just because I still have yet to do any trading online. It is kind of like your first eBay experience in a way. I was pretty paranoid about getting ripped off when I bought my iPod a while back. Now I make a majority of my large purchases on eBay and I am saving a lot of money doing it.

I will let you know how the email situation turns out and about anything I learn about zecco.com.

If any of you have actually used zecco.com or have heard anything comments would be greatly appreciated!!!