Zecco has come a long way since its founding in 2006. Even though it is a relatively new brokerage, it has the advantage of an experienced management team that has worked with Charles Schwab, E-Trade and TradeKing. In just over five years, they have created one of the best discount online options trading brokerages.
We have to give kudos to Zecco for taking advantage of social networking and new technologies. Since this broker is newly created, they did not have to evolve an old way of doing business to how people interact online now. They dived right into online trading, online community building and social networking tools. At the time of this review, they just released their Facebook app, which allows their clients interact with other traders, view quotes and place orders through a Zecco Facebook app called Wall Street. We commend Zecco for stripping the necktie uptightness from stock trading and making it a comfortable fit for all types of traders.
This options broker no longer doles out free trades like they used to, but they still only charge an exceedingly low trade fee of $4.95. They also only charge a flat fee for broker-assisted orders, and options are only $0.65 per contract. This broker offers the same low fees to everyone regardless of trade volume or account balance. If you are looking for low-priced stock, options and ETF trade prices, Zecco is one of the best.
With Zecco you can make bank without breaking the bank. Trade fees with Zecco are among the lowest prices you will find at $4.95 per equity trade, and option orders are $4.95 plus $0.65 per contract. They charge the same price for everyone, regardless of trade activity or account balance. This is an excellent value since many brokers only offer their best rates to active traders or those who subscribe to a membership. In addition, their broker-assisted orders are just $19.99 rather than a fee plus a per contract or share fee (though standard trade fee still apply). Their extended-hours trade orders are only a mere $0.005 extra per share.
Although their margin rates are not the lowest, they are still about market average. If you have a loan balance under $9,999, it is 7.75% (base rate), and if you have a balance over $500,000 it is 3.75% (base rate minus 4.00%). However, they do relate that the margin rate for high balances is negotiable. Other fees include $15 for wire transfer withdrawals, $20 for overnight check delivery and $50 for outgoing account transfers. If you are an IRA investor, it should be noted that they charge a $30 annual fee and $30 for IRA account closures.
The Zecco trading platform and research tools are elegant, organized and continually updated. The newest incarnation of their trading platform includes tools for creating complex options orders, conditional orders and advanced orders. Zecco's options strategy builder can create scenarios such as covered calls, collars, married puts, straddles, strangles, butterflies, iron butterflies, spreads and more. You can also view quotes and place options orders with the iPhone and from Facebook. Their options analyzer can graph profit and losses for all types of strategies.
The trading platform can also place conditional orders, including one triggers others, one cancels others, bracket orders and contingent orders. In addition, it can place advanced orders such as fill or kill, all or none, market on open, market on close, limit on open and limit on close. Besides options and stock, you can also place Forex and EFT orders using Zecco and invest in IRAs.
In terms of stock and market research, Zecco provides the information that you would expect to find such as market news, overviews, video commentary, events, sector overviews and charts. In addition, you can click on any stock to see more information. For example, if you click on GOOG from anywhere you can access company highlights, fundamentals, peer comparisons, commentary, charts, options, financials and much more to help you make your investment decisions. You can also choose from seven different chart styles and from linear or logarithmic scale.
Zecco is available for customer assistance during extended business hours by telephone, chat, mail, fax or email Monday through Friday and limited hours on Sunday. We contracted them by chat and they responded with courteous and direct answers within seconds. Indirect support includes FAQs covering all general topics, instructional videos, a forms library and Forex help. You can also access help topics from your account and trading platform.
Zecco has worked hard to create an active community of fellow traders for commentary, discussion and camaraderie. Through your account, you can access the community dashboard, which will give you access to discussions as well as lists of most traded, most held, top performers, Twitter mentions, their blog, groups and ZeccoPulse. We also looked at their new Facebook app Wall Street. Through this app you can look up quotes, view market news and place trades. You can use this app free but you have to have a Zecco account to place orders. The Facebook app is somewhat limited but it's a fun way to check quotes and interact with your stock trading friends.
Stock and options trading is no longer limited to Wall Street or a financial planner's office; Zecco has departed from archaic ways of trading and has made trading accessible and affordable to everyone. They have also pulled from older technologies the aspects that worked and evolved what they have learned into newer technologies that are in pace with how people interact online. We commend them for responding to previous negative comments about their customer service and greatly improving their support in the past few years. In addition, although they no longer offer free trades to everyone, $4.95 is about as close to free as you can get.
