Those that have been reading know that I had some small complains about how Etrade financial handle stock splits and spin offs. However, overall, I have been pretty satisfied with their performance. My girlfriend uses TD Ameritrade as her brokerage and IRA, and I finally convinced her last night that putting money from her brokerage into a Roth IRA is a good thing. So, today, I went ahead to log into her brokerage account to move money into the Roth IRA only to find that I can?? do this easily!
In Etrade, this is very easy (point and click, done in 1 minute and the funds are accessible right away). In TD Ameritrade, there just isn?? any visible way to do this! There is transfer from bank to brokerage, wire transfer, checks but nothing that says account to account transfer even if it?? from a TD Ameritrade to a TD Ameritrade account under the same person!
I gave up looking after a quick check and called them, which took about 30 minutes until I spoke with someone. After I spoke to the representative, she mentioned that she would need to transfer me to the ??ransfer department??which took another 8 minutes. After I finally got the right person over the phone, the lady told me that I would have to fill out a form and fax it over since they require a signature. I asked her when it would get done since I need to have this done before April 17 (tomorrow) and she said that as long as I fax it in today, it will be transferred. So I faxed it in, and it?? 4:25pm EST (end of market closing) and I still don?? see the funds moved.
I know why I still use Etrade financial now. What takes 1 minute with Etrade took 1 hour with TD Ameritrade to do the call, paperwork, fax, and yet I still do not havea confirmation that it is done. I probably have to call tonight since I have a day job and plan to keep it.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Took just a few mins to set up a Roth IRA with Wells Fargo.
Free trades too if all your accounts + 10% of mortgage totals >=$25k.
Didn’t even have a brokerage account there either, just a regular bank account.
Seems like it makes sense to open a Roth IRA account with Wellsfargo or the $0 trading accounts rather than Etrade or TD Ameritrade but not as much for a brokerage account. Thanks for the reminder that I can do this!
I faxed my transfer request to Ameritrade on April 16th. Today is April 25th and still no word from them.
Two months ago I put in a request with Ameritrade to DTC one position from Scottrade. They sat on it for three weeks before calling to tell me that Scottrade did not want to transfer the whole position.
“Ok. So transfer just 900,000 shares instead.” They could have simply sent an email to tell me about the problem.
Now, I used to work for a brokerage firm. So, I understand that things don’t always work smoothly; but sometimes I just I don’t understand why some firms, and especially some online firms, act as though they are still living in the steam age.
The time I put in the request was exactly the same as yours. I called TD Ameritrade on the 17th and they said they got my request and will put it in. However, I did not expect it to take 10 days or maybe even more than that. I’m still waiting but out of the country to really give them a call to see what’s wrong.
I agree with you that this is the online age adn things shouldn’t be this difficult.
I’ll keep you posted on the status of my transfer.
Thanks. So far I haven’t seen the transfer yet while the stocks I want to buy keep going up everyday. Oh well!
Anyway, care to share with everyone what DTC is and also why you want to transfer your positions from TD Ameritrade to Scottstrade since you can give a whole different perspective than our personal accounts?
Ameritrade must be watching your blog because the very next morning after my last post, they did my transfer; at least they debited my cash account. Then it took another day for the money to show up in my IRA. Finally!
DTC = a very evil entity; see “Antichrist”.
Here are two great overviews of the topic of “naked short selling”, which by the way is unlawful, explaining how the DTC appears to be conspiring with those miscreants to break a 75 year old SEC regulation.
Printed Article:
http://omuse.overstock.com/wiki/Understanding_Naked_Shorting_Stock_Manipulation
Audio/Visual Presentation:
http://www.businessjive.com/nss/darkside.html
Why did I want to transfer from Ameritrade to Scottrade?
I actually like Scottrade a lot. In fact, for trading, I prefer Scottrade’s “Elite” interface, which is a genuine Windows program as opposed to a Java applet.
However, Scottrade changed its fee structure on me. Apparently, they do not want any penny stock business.
Their commission is a flat $7 for stocks trading online at one dollar or higher. Under a dollar, though, they add an extra one half of one percent of the principle, which can get pretty costly when you have a million shares of a stock that you expect to sell between $0.35 – $0.75 sometime soon.
So, I was planning to transfer that position to Ameritrade anyway in order to save $2,500+ in added commission when I happened to receive a letter from Ameritrade offering a $500 pre-paid gas card just for transfering or depositing $100,000 in new equity.
Win Win
If Scottrade wants the equity back, their going to have to drop the punitive penny stock commission rate.
Yes they must be readers of my blog since my account was credited too on the same day yours was. I used the money and bought the ETF DIA (Dow Jones index ETF) and so far so good.
Anyway, ahh I see why you are changing to Scott Trade. But wouldn’t the timing of moving your funds over affect your stock’s worth? If you have 900,000 shares, I would assume any percentage change would easily equal $2,500.
I have the same issue (at a smaller scale). Theoritically I can move my funds to Wellsfargo or something before I sell them and switch them back, but a day of change could be worth more than the $10 or $20 commissions that I will be charged, not to mention the extra hassle. Is this worth it?
This particular stock has not reached my sell price. Daily fluctuations do add up, but I’m waiting for the big hit with this one. My average cost is $0.08 and I expect it to pop up to between $0.35 and $0.75.
I did sell about half at $0.16 and bought it back at $0.13, a commission savings of over $500 so far.
I used the $12,000 generated from this short term market move to buy some AUY L-08 Calls.
When gold pops this Summer, I should do well.
Hmm that’s a nice chunk of change! I admire your patience in holidng penny stocks because of the volatility.
I will probably be posting my stock soon. Stay tuned about it and give some comments!
I’ve been trading for 30 years. TDA is horrible. Their website is basically useless. Unexecuted limit day orders do not expire at the close – they rollover and show they’ll expire on the close of the next trading day. Try ‘changing’ a saved order – you CANNOT. Command Center 2.0 and Strategy Desk are absolutely worthless – dropped data, server problems, etc. TDA even cost me $30k in losses because they told me mutual funds transferred into an account would take 3 to 5 bus. days to ‘re-register’. After the market dropped dramatically in Sep. 2008, they back-peddled and said that the funds had been available for trading and that I should have called every day to check the status of the 6 incomng mutual funds. I sure miss my old TD Waterhouse accounts – now THAT was a great company.