Disappointed And Irritated With Scottrade
Q: When I sold my stocks (both on markets, one is $6.30 and the other stock is $26.90, so they are not penny stocks), in addition to the $7.00, there is a small fees added (around $0.32 for one), again, what the hack is the "fees" which again I don't see it on the commision disclosure, am I missing something?
A:
Scottrade doesn't seems to be as honorable as what I gathered from the
newsgroup, I shouldn't have to go through all this, not so much of the $$.
Moreso, is what other surprises they are going to throw at me. One of
the reason I choose Scottrade over IB or MB Trading is under the
impression that I won't get surprises. Now I'm beginning to h
thoughts. My impression is that the commision is $7.00 flat for market
order, so what are those extra "fees"?
This is the only part of your questions that I choose to reply to
because it has nothing whatever to do with Scottrade. There is
no earthly reason for them to "disclose" that fee in their info.
I gather you are totally new to trading stocks. The fee involved
is the SEC fee of (last I looked) 4.68c per $1,000 of sale value.
Since it is a government imposed fee, not only are you going to
run into it everywhere, but there isn't any reason for a broker
to disclose it. It applies only to the seller, not to the buyer.
Get used to it. It's going to be there in some similar amount on
any trade you ever do through any broker you ever use.
The SEC fee dates all the way back to prior to when I first started
trading stocks, more than 42 years ago. No broker has ever missed
charging it on any sale of mine in all those years. They did
"float" the rate itself within the past couple of years, so that
now I no longer know for sure what the exact amount is (4.68c per
$1,000 valuation is what I quoted to you) unless I just recently
looked at the SEC web site for that info or just got a trade ticket
back from my brokers that came in with a different amount than
what I recorded it as when I booked the trade. The one thing you
can be sure of is that that fee, of some amount, will be there on
each and every sale you make.