ShareBuilder is a discount broker service provided by ING Direct Investing. With this service, you can trade stocks and options, invest in mutual funds, manage your retirement and conduct your banking with their online bank. They provide online options trading tools for most mobile devices or you can access your account via internet web-enabled mobile device.
They offer two fee plans for stock/options orders. Unlike other brokers, they do not base their trade fees on volume or account balance but on a monthly subscription fee. Their automatic investment service is one of their most well known products. With automatic investment, you can automatically buy stock, ETFs or invest in a mutual fund in regular payments. This is a valuable service but has little to do with options trading.
ShareBuilder offers two pricing programs that determine fees for transactions. Their basic program is free and the advantage program is $12 per month. The advantage program provides lower transaction fees and margin rates. In terms of options trading, the basic rate is $9.95 plus $1.25 per contract and the advantage program is $7.95 per order plus $0.75 per contract. The margin rate for the advantage program is 0.5% less than the basic rate, which is between 4.2% and 7.2%, depending on your loan balance. Their margin rates are a bit higher than most; however, if you subscribe to the advantage plan and have a loan balance over $250,000 the interest rate is only 3.7%.
Other fees related to options trading include exercise and assignment fees. Each early exercise costs $30, an automatic exercise is $20 and assignments are $20. Phone trades are $19.95. ShareBuilder does offer quite a few services for free, such as checking/savings transfers, electronic funds withdrawals, and dividend and capital gains reinvestment.
This discount broker does not provide the lowest fees for options trading. However, they do provide affordable long-term automatic investment options. If you enroll in the advantage plan and configure automatic investments, the first 12 trades are free and it's only $1 for additional trades. This equates to about a dollar per trade for automatic investing. This is an exceptional deal for long-term, low-volume investors.
Although it is simple to place an order with ShareBuilder, they provide few research and analysis tools. If you already have a collection of trading tools you use to test strategies, you may not mind the absence of common trading tools. However, if you are looking for an options trading broker that provides complex strategy tools, charts and calculators all in a neat bundle, this service will disappoint you. The option tools are limited to an options search tool and three basic tools provided by the Options Industry Council website. You can filter option tables by call and put, call or put, and by in-the-money or near-the-money. Market news is provided by popular services including MarketWatch, Thomson Reuters, BATS Exchange and Briefing.com.
In terms of managing your account, trades and positions, ShareBuilder is more than adequate. You can easily transfer money in and out, monitor your portfolio and find forms. They also provide simple to understand retirement tools and banking services.
Compared to other options brokers, ShareBuilder provides modest support. You can contact customer service by telephone or email, but they do not provide customer service via chat. Help is limited to a handful of FAQs and a few video tutorials. As with all brokers, you are required to agree to an extensive list of terms (22 pages of them) before you can open your account. To ING Direct's credit, they do attempt to make the agreement somewhat amusing to read, which helps you get through the long list of disclosures and agreements.
They do not provide extensive educational opportunities, nor do they support an online trading forum. However, you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter, which they update regularly. They also sponsor investing groups on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
They do provide one unique option for customers in select locations. ING Direct has eight cafés across the U.S. that provide free coffee, internet and consultations with their associates. This is not a customer service option per se but it's a good way to learn about the services they provide. You can visit a café in such cities as Chicago, Los Angeles, Honolulu or New York City. They also offer you the opportunity to host special events at their Cafés.
If you are interested in dabbling in the market or creating a hands-free retirement plan, ShareBuilder is good gateway market option. They offer exceptional automatic investment pricing and simple long-term investment options. However, this broker is not ideal for active day traders or experienced options traders since they provide few analysis tools and their volume trading fees are higher than many other discount brokers.
