While I’ve made it a mission to orient myself with the best online brokers around the web, I’ve come to know quite a few of them well enough to favor some over others. As far as Zecco is concerned, I look upon this company as a popular entity in the online broker world: they’re well-known and recognizable, and have some great features to offer. I’ve written a little bit about them before, in my Zecco vs TradeKing showdown post and when I wrote about free stock trades.
But let’s get into a little bit more detail today, and find out what it is that makes Zecco tick, and investigate whether they’re the right discount broker for you.
Our Zecco Review
Pricing: Free Online Trading and Ultra Low Commissions!
Do you know where Zecco got it’s name? It stands for “zero commission cost”. Zecco is known first and foremost for their “free stock trades” mantra. How many other discount brokers out there are able to boast this kind of offer? Needless to say, free trades are rare and what Zecco gives you is a fairly simple deal: 10 free stock trades per month if you qualify, by having at least $25,000 minimum in your account balance or if you execute at least 25 trades per month. You’ll then pay $4.50 for each trade beyond that (after you exhaust your free trades quota). Note however, that if you do not use your earned free stock trades, they won’t roll over to the next month.
For those who don’t qualify for these zero commission trades, you’ll be charged $4.50 per online trade, which graduates to $19.99 for broker-assisted transactions. Other brokers — like TradeKing ($4.95 flat) and OptionsHouse ($3.95 flat for equity trades) — charge a simple flat fee for all types of trades, whether online or broker-assisted. While I like the bonus trades, I also appreciate the simplicity of having one basic flat price since it makes it easy for me to determine how much my transactions will cost me.
Other pricing details: Zecco has no account minimum or inactivity fees. For no load funds, they do charge $10 for online vs $19.99 for broker-assisted transactions. For options trading, they charge $4.50 per leg and $0.50 per contract. However, while they’ve got free tools, you’ll have to pay to use some of their more advanced tools via a premium service.
User Experience and User Interface
Zecco’s user interface can certainly use some improvement: their site can be organized better. If you want to compare, you can check out other stock brokerages that have clean and well-organized interfaces like those from TradeKing and OptionsHouse. In addition, Zecco could also work on streamlining their reporting mechanisms a bit better.
Zecco Trading Center
Community
To Zecco’s credit, they’ve got a community feature that you won’t see in most other broker sites. Their community is called ZeccoShare, and it’s a place where you can interact with other investors and traders, where you can get questions answered. It’s a place to compare portfolios and trades, and to share your ideas on investing with others. Here, you can create your own profile, visit forums and blogs, and create or join investing groups. They also have a virtual trading environment under their community section, called the Zecco Zimulator, where you can practice trading without risk and where you’re able to see how other “virtual traders” are faring.
Investment Products, Including The New Forex Trading Section
So what can you do with Zecco? You can trade stocks, options, ETFs, mutual funds and bonds. While they have the standard investment products available for purchase, they’ve also just introduced Forex trading (that’s foreign currency trading).
The new Forex trading platform looks promising and also offers new traders a free $50,000 online Forex trading practice account upon sign up. This helps when you’re just learning how to trade foreign currencies, knowing that your own money is not on the line. For this platform, you’ll get $50,000 in virtual funds as well as charting features, educational resources, real time quotes and phone or live chat support.
Sure, it sounds like a lot, but these virtual trading platforms have become common fare (and are expected) at sites that provide higher risk services such as options trading and Forex trading. For more on options trading, you can also check out our OptionsHouse and OptionsXpress reviews.
Tools and Research
Like many other broker sites, Zecco has a tools, quotes and research section and an area for investing and options education. You can review stock choices through their Stock Screener, analyze the options market through their Options Analytics tool and receive alerts for free. For use of more advanced tools such as their Quotestream II (a market data and technical analysis tool) and their Performance and Tax Planning software, you’ll have to pay extra. And like all other brokers I know, they’ve got their own online “library” which provides you educational material, videos (by the Zecco Zirens) and webinars.
Now that you’ve heard our opinions, if you’re interested in signing up with Zecco, you can do so here!
Copyright © 2009 The Digerati Life. All Rights Reserved.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
They allow forex trading also? That’s pretty neat.
Yep! Haven’t come across Forex trading in the standard brokers lists just yet. So this could be the next feature added to other popular trading sites as well.
I maintain the $25,000 balance in order to get the free trades, but use TDAmeritrade for my research. Their website is much more user friendly than Zecco’s. Once I select a stock, I just click over to Zecco to make the purchase.
This pretty good. I like using eToro though. But this is the first time that I’m reading about this, so I’m going to give it a try anyway!
Thanks for sharing. cheers.
-Nemo
Zecco seems to have good services. I can see many useful tools here.
I too use etoro usually but I might give this a try after this article. Great post. I’ve used TDAmeritrade in the past and found it great so I will be curious to see how this lines up.
Great! This info is useful for new traders like me, thanks!
I’ve received a lot of recommendations for Zecco and so I signed up for it. Their support is great too.
I have been trading options with optionsxpress and they have been very helpful and friendly so far. The platform has many features including “dragon scan”- a scan of strategy available and many others.
For forex trading, I’m using the Saxo Trader multi platform and they had been serving me well too.
Seems that the Zecco’s platform is well received here too.
Zecco works well for me. I like their community in particular. They are also one of the more reputable brokers with a Forex trading section.