This is the best on line system for an inexperienced trader or first time trader. Just beware that your free trades begin when the account is opened and your funds, depending on how you fund the account, can take up to 2 weeks to become available. So the free 30 days of trading become more like 1 to 2 weeks. Fund with a wire transfer directly from your bank for the fastest opening. I did not due to the cost of a wire transfer, but in retrospect, I would have saved commissions.
I did not know the 12.99 rate automatically dropped when you surpassed the required number of trades in a quarter, but mine dropped automatically to 9.99 when I did.
The online tools, the real time streaming quotes, the ability to search for stocks and the tax forms make this a top notch site, despite the higher cost per trade.
Beware of some cheap sites that do not place real time trades, but instead block and transfer several times a day. This does not give you the ability to catch a high or low during the trading day. Also after hours trading saved my back once and the savings from that one trade covered a lot of trades.
I would like to see my cost at 7 per trade rather than 10 OR 14. Every time I buy and sell I need to allow for $20 (OR $28) rather than $14. So if I buy 100 shares at 10.00 I know it is really 10.20 when you count the buy and sell. So on a 10 dollar stock (100 share) I loose 2% on the trade. Smaller trades cost a larger percentage so I try not to buy less than 1,000 worth even if I dealing with a low priced stock like Citibank which today is sitting around $3. (I would buy 300-400 shares)
I dislike their selling system a little. I can limit my buy to a set price say buy 100 shares of GE at $11.00, yet I cannot limit a sale unless there is 300 shares or more. (AON all or none to avoid a breakup of sales and additional commission costs)
Beware of the AON - all or none. ETrade lets you do this. You go to buy or sell say 500 shares of PAL at 2.25, and if you don't check the AON, you can see several trades to get the total 500 shares. This can generate individual fees per trade. If you do AON, you can guarantee only 1 buy or sell fee, but the trade may not execute as fast as expected since a match a that exact number shares or from a trader that does not stop broken lots may take longer.
Overall I'm a happy with eTrade and for the new trader you could do a lot worse.
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