At zecco.com and Bank of America (BAC) commissions are ZERO. 0, this nice round number, may mean big troubles to Ameritrade (AMTD), ETrade (ETFC), Charles Schwab (SCHW) and many other brokers… Do we, the people, care?
Not really. What we really want is to stop giving our money to blood-sucking leeches. We hate commissions!
LEECHES? Don’t worry, the little blood they take won’t hurt you.
When we invest, we use our hardly earned money, and we work to input our data and computers the computational job : a job a million times simpler than than the job to show us a result page on a search engine research.
Why “did” we have to pay many dollars for that simple job? Because of a Medieval tradition I guess. BUT NOW WE SAY NO! In a low-cost global society, when We The People want, we eventually do win: let’s see what we got this time:
1) 40 free trades [this is changing] per month at zecco.com .
Is there a catch? No, there seems to be no catch. Just an honest further limit of 10 trades in a day, an understandable first deposit minimum of $2500 and an interest rate on uninvested money a bit lower that other on-line brokers.
Can we trust zecco? Probably yes. One of founders of zecco.com, Morten Lund, was among the few heroes who gave us “free speech” (not the one the right that was given us by Constitutional Fathers, the that we got from Skype when we stopped having to pay to talk to each other long distance). After getting “free speech”, we believe Morten to be capable of giving us “free trade”.
2) 30 free trades per month at Bank of America. BAC is a trustworthy institution; I even own their stock. Unfortunately they require a banking account of $25000 minimum to get the free trades. Not all of us can meet that kind of requirement… unfortunately
In the middle between the huge bank and the Internet pirates we find someone who is is big troubles: Online brokers who built their fortune on low commissions, which were low compared to what one could find 10 years ago, but are a rip-off compared to zero. Ameritrade (AMTD, Forward P/E=12.5 ), ETrade (ET Forward P/E=11.4), Charles Schwab (SCHW Forward P/E=17.9 ) and their likes are in trouble… They are still growing, but they their stock is already cheap (very low Forward P/E) because investors are afraid they will have to join the “zero commissions zone” sooner or later… or else they risk to disappear, because We, The People, don’t forgive whoever refuses to go low cost!
A few useful links:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/krantz/2006-10-17-free-trades_x.htm
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/22/3014/
Concerning this particular proletarian investor writing on deminvest:
In the last 12 months I have made 70 trades, wasting around $1200 of commissions. I only see advantages on zecco. I don’t care about low interest on unused money on the account: with free trades I can park them in seconds on Bonds or Bond-ETFs that offer good yields, so there won’t be money sitting on my zecco account.
As soon as I’ll have $2500 cash and as soon as I’ll stop feeling too lazy to fill all necessary papers, I’ll open a brand new zecco account.
BUY, SELL, KEEP 
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