Why Not Go Invest? SogoInvest Offers Cheap Trading Platform | Finance > Personal Finance from AllBusiness.com
Facebook Twitter You Tube RSS Feed

Related

Related Blog Posts on this Topic

Why Not Go Invest? SogoInvest Offers Cheap Trading Platform

As many of you know, I am working toward making this a blog that is reader-directed. I welcome questions (via the "Contact Advisor" button above) and make an effort to answer them on this blog. If you have a question, chances are that someone else has that question as well. This go-round is a question about a new online discount brokerage:

Recently I started an account with a newer discount broker, SogoInvest. I

More
As many of you know, I am working toward making this a blog that is reader-directed. I welcome questions (via the "Contact Advisor" button above) and make an effort to answer them on this blog. If you have a question, chances are that someone else has that question as well. This go-round is a question about a new online discount brokerage:
Recently I started an account with a newer discount broker, SogoInvest. I haven't seen much about them, and I was wondering your professional take.
After tooling around on the SogoInvest Web site, I have come to the conclusion that it can, indeed, be a very valuable addition to an investment strategy. The biggest advantage held by SogoInvest is its rock-bottom commisions. $3 per trade. And that includes real time trades. If you open a subscription account (see prices, etc. here), you can get even lower trade rates -- even for real time trades. Compare that to brokerages that can charge as much as $14.95 if you want to make a real time trades. No minimum investment amount makes it easy for anyone to get started, and you have a straight cash or a cash with margin option. (The margin option comes with more risk.) Additionally, the automated investing options and dollar-cost averaging (buy partial shares instead of whole shares) make SogoInvest a good option for beginning investors, and for investors that don't want to check stock price action everyday. Beginning investors can build a portfolio rather cheaply. If you are familiar with Sharebuilder, you can get an idea of what SogoInvest is like (only cheaper). It is obvious that SogoInvest has online discount brokers like Sharebuilder in its sights. Possible drawbacks to SogoInvest The main drawbacks are that there are no mutual fund or retirement account offerings. Options traders will also be disappointed. However, retirement accounts and college savings accounts do appear to be in the works. But, for now, ETFs and individual stocks are your only options with SogoInvest. Additionally, the tools are simplistic, so advanced traders may find themselves wishing for more. But the simplicity and the ease of use are what makes the commissions the lowest in the business. More advanced traders can take an opposite investment strategy to the beginning trader: use SogoInvest for short term trading (to save on the commissions) and keep the advanced options offered by online brokers like TDAmeritrade and Scottrade for long term holdings. There's no law that says you can't use more than one online broker. As always, with investing, there are risks. And, with most online discount brokers, it is important that you do good research to determine what brokerages work best for you, and will help you best reach your financial goals. And you have to do the researching leg work to find the best investment shares to buy as well. , , , , , , ,

TRENDING NOW:   Save. Spend. Do.,  Free Downloads!,  Credit Crunch Plagues Small Businesses,  Business Resource Center,
BootCamps

Recent AllBusiness Blog Posts

  • Training and Support in a Home Based Business Part 3

    Training and Support is important in a Home Based Business. How does ITV Ventures size up?

  • Getting Cash Fast

    We've all seen the ads: "Get fast cash NOW! Bad credit? No credit? You can still get cash easily." These types of businesses are legal, but not particularly ethical. They charge steep fees (usually a percentage of the amount borrowed) that in some cases amount to as high as a 300% interest rate, if you were to hold the loan for a year. I received a question from a reader recently (by use of the "Contact Advisor" button at the top) regarding a way to get a personal loan quickly from a bank. The sad truth is that getting cash fast from a regular bank is not exactly something that is easy to do. There is credit history to check and other considerations. And while a small loan can sometimes be had in a day or

  • CEO Blog Can of Worms?

    I am currently researching web hosting solutions for a non-shopping cart website that we will be starting. On one of the hosting companies I was considering, I read the CEO's blog. Nothing particularly wrong with his blog per se; it was the comments posted by presumably unhappy customers. While there will always be disgruntled customers at some point, the details in these replies really made me sit up and take notice. Most the complaints seemed to indicate that customer / technical support was not very satisfactory. Customer service and technical support quality is going to be very important to me as

  • eBay Phishing Getting More Fishy

    In this blog post, I talked about how Phishing may be impacting the ability of genuine eBay sellers to get through to their customers. In just the past week, I have counted the eBay "Phishing" emails that have hit our inboxes. Even with spam protection on, I counted 33 spams. Of those, 16 were eBay phishing emails. There was everything from bogus threats to leave negative feedback for non shipment to phony invitations to join the eBay PowerSeller program. I can really see this as a big problem for eBay and its associated payment processor PayPal. I'm starting

  • Why Not Go Invest? SogoInvest Offers Cheap Trading Platform

    As many of you know, I am working toward making this a blog that is reader-directed. I welcome questions (via the "Contact Advisor" button above) and make an effort to answer them on this blog. If you have a question, chances are that someone else has that question as well. This go-round is a question about a new online discount brokerage:

    Recently I started an account with a newer discount broker, SogoInvest. I

New On AllBusiness

Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.