Sharebuilder Brokerage - $50 Bonus and Two Free Trades
A few days ago I received an offer in the mail from Sharebuilder. I was about to throw it away when I noticed:
GET STARTED WITH A $50 BONUS!
Oh, tell me more!
I’ve stayed away from purchasing any individual stocks or ETFs… until now. This Sharebuilder offer finally convinced me to dive in. The offer code is INVEST50, and you can access it here:
http://www.sharebuilder.com/invest50
Opening an account is simple and can be done completely online. If you have an existing ING Direct account, you can link it to Sharebuilder after your account is open. Because ING now owns Sharebuilder, one nice benefit is that you can make immediate transfers between linked ING Direct and Sharebuilder accounts. Nice!
Pricing Programs and $4 Automatic Investments
Let’s keep this simple: Sharebuilder offers three different pricing programs. Two of them cost a monthly fee and one of them is free. Unless you want to trade frequently, I suggest sticking with the free option.
In the Basic (free) option, you can buy stocks for a $4 commission, but only as part of their Automatic Investment Plan (AIP). For someone who does not care about real-time pricing and just wants to “average” their way in, the AIP is neat. Essentially, you just:
- Select the ticker for the stock or ETF that you want to buy and select a dollar amount that you want to invest.
- Create an investment schedule - weekly, monthly, one-time only, or (my personal favorite) invest when funds are available.
- Set a funding schedule - choose how much and how frequently to transfer from your linked checking/savings account.
Once your schedule is set, Sharebuilder handles the rest. All automatic investments are transacted on Tuesdays.
Money Market
All cash that you transfer into Sharebuilder is held in a money market account (BDMXX). As of this writing, the money market has a 7-day yield of 1.76%. While it is better than nothing, I’d rather see Sharebuilder offer something more along the lines of their own savings account (currently earning 2.75%) as a cash sweep.
Two Free Real-time Trades
Once your account is open, you can apply for another promotion. If it works, you will receive two FREE real-time trades. Normally, real-time trades are $9.95 each, so this is a good value. I’m not sure how long this promotion will last, but it’s worth a shot:
In your Account Overview, click the tab for Promotions. Enter the code RTTSITE.
If it works, you will receive a notice that you qualified for two free trades. Here’s the e-mail confirmation that I received:
I just used the two credits yesterday to buy my first individual stocks in my life! In case you’re curious, I decided to jump in and buy some shares of GE and INTC. Both stocks offer decent dividends, and I don’t plan to sell for at least 5-10 years. Maybe I won’t completely lose my assets. 
All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with Sharebuilder. The interface is intuitive (to me), automatic investing works fluidly, and I appreciate the integration with ING Direct. If I were a more active trader, I’d probably look at something like Zecco. For my modest needs, Sharebuilder works fine.
The $50 bonus helps, too.
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