10 free stock trades w/ $25,000 balance @ Zecco

I have had two accounts with Zecco, one regular and the second an IRA. I closed the regular account and will close the IRA once the positions are closed.

Zecco stands for Zero Commissions. This is no longer the case. The $4.5/trade is a great price; however, they could have done a better job squeezing out low-quality customers. For example, lower it to 1-5 free trades to existing customers, just so that they can get their foot in the door. (For more experienced traders, execution time in milliseconds is more important that commission price. Think about it: $10000 trade times 1 penny = $100. If client gets a penny worst because broker missed a better price, client is better off paying even $50 for the trade, as he/she lost $100.)

I understand that they had to raise the price, especially in this market, but this means it makes less sense to go with them. Streaming quotes is non-existence and trading platform... if one can call it a platform, begs for attention.

One other positive thing (in addition to low price) is if you have a positive cash balance, you can select from three money market funds (symbols CSAXX, ITRXX and CHSXX). Granted, most/all MMF now yield close to 0%. Nevertheless, it is an option not offered by all brokers (example: TD Ameritrade), and will become important when rates rise again.

The bottom line is that they were great in the beginning but it now makes less sense to go with Zecco (relative to the competition).

Zecco is one of the cheapest brokerages to trade stocks. At 4.50 a trade it is definitely worth it. I have yet to have a problem with them.

Zecco keeps changing the terms on you. First it was 40 free trades with no minimum, balance, then it become 10 free trades with $2500 minimum, and now its 10 free trades with $25000 minimum. I've moved out of Zecco back to Fidelity. If you have $25K and place frequent trades (say 10 a month), then this may work for you. But no guarantee that they'll not make this 100K sometime.

I was a previous Zecco customer. I left very dissatisfied with them. At the time, I had trouble logging into my account during normal trading hours. When I called customer service, sometimes I'd be on hold for a long time. And there were other issues too (like if I shorted an option that then expired out-of-the-money, the covering long option couldn't be traded until I contacted customer service and had them manually release it).

Maybe they've fixed all these issues by now. Hopefully they've corrected all their mistakes and are fine now. But I now use TradeKing and I'm very happy with them. They're slightly more expensive ($4.95 per trade + $0.65 per option as opposed to $4.50 per trade + $0.50 per option at Zecco), but the tiny added cost is well worth the added value, reliability, and superior customer service, in my humble opinion. :)

Zecco made a really huge boo-boo on April 1 by "accidentally" giving everyone millions of bucks on their margin accounts. Google for it on news.google.com

Zecco changes conditions for 10 free trades: now requires minimum of $25000 in assets or make 25 trades per month (at $4.50).