This submission details changes in the grades to firms in this survey. Grades are reviewed at least quarterly.
The discount brokerage landscape has been surveyed for the past four or so years. Each December, on New Year's Eve, a new national champion is crowned. The award is given to the broker that provides the best value for the long-term investor; which means, it's the broker that has the lowest, overall transaction cost. Here's a line-up of the National Champions.
2011 Lightspeed Trading
2010 Lightspeed Trading
2009 Zecco
Let’s look at the overall results: the grades in a tabulated format. I hope you enjoy some of the names of the different firms.
These grades were initially assigned as of December 31, 2011. During the course of the year, as things change, the survey will be revisited; if important new information is found about a broker, a grade will be reassigned. In fact, one of the articles below includes a current list of the top ten brokers, from best to worst, using the approach adopted in this survey. As of New Year's Eve, four companies earned an A grade; seven companies are currently graded as a B; a total of 11 companies merited a C, while 26 companies received a D. Finally, 15 companies were awarded a failing grade: an F. Keep in mind: they failed as brokers for long-term investors; the definition of such investors was discussed earlier. A brokerage firm that earns an F for a long-term investor, could well merit an A for a trader. One company, SureTrader, was not graded for reasons disclosed in the discussion section for that company.
]]>This post is a deeper dive into the format used to critique each brokerage firm. The post after this one contains a summary of the grades, which is followed by posts that provide some expanded details on each of the brokerage firms reviewed in this survey. The commentary on each broker is divided into two sections: (i) a summary of key fees and related matter and (ii) a discussion on the firm in question, which includes any response from the company.
]]>Welcome to the 2011 survey of discount brokerage firms. Information on self-styled discount brokers has been compiled for almost four years; it’s now time to publish. This introduction contains a description of the methodology used to grade firms. A table in the third post shows the results. Towards the end there are posts where each broker is described in some detail using a standard format. The third article focuses on a breakdown of the format used to describe each individual broker.
The approach, in summary, is as follows: brokers were analyzed on commission rates, additional fees and overall service. A total of sixty-four brokerage websites were included in this survey. If there are more out there that were missed, please let me know. Each broker was assigned a letter grade, A through F.
In the next few articles, the term "earnings" and "earnings per share" will be used very frequently. In fact, in the analyses that follow, earnings will be paramount; they'll be used in some shape or form pretty continuously. The main focus will be on earnings per share. We're focused on buying shares of common stock, so normalizing the earnings to the number of shares makes sense.
So before discussing Earnings per Share or EPS, the term should be defined. EPS (Earnings per Share) is Net Income (after dividends have been paid on preferred shares) divided by the number of shares outstanding. Since the number of outstanding shares fluctuates a lot, the "profit" is actually dividend by the average number of outstanding shares. Each of those two new terms needs to be discussed.
In the article entitled The Dividend Discount Model interest rates were examined together with a short introduction to discounting a stream of cash flows and determining a value for an investment opportunity. This value depended on the rate of return required by a willing buyer. In this blog, the goal is to turn this effort on its head and learn how to figure out an interest rate if we only know the stream of cash flows and the future value. The effort borrows from areas with which most people are already familiar: a savings account. It shows how the mechancis of calculating interest payments in such an account can be adapted to figuring out how well a portfolio is performing. The method that Quicken and other similar packages and sites uses will be demonstrated and shown to be equivalent to an Excel function called XIRR. The limitations of this approach will be touched on. Be forewarned: this article is long!
]]>This article focuses on calculating returns from a Zecco account; Zecco is a discount broker that once offer free trades. This policy changed in early 2011. The company allows clients to published their annualized return. The company has provided details of how this return is calculated, but it likely follows industry norms for mutual funds. This article focuses on how to determine a return for yourself. This article complements an earlier submission on the Dividend Discount Model. After this article, you'll find an Excel-based description on how to calculate the annual return on your portfolio using cash flows.
This article is not even near completion; however, a few people noticed it in the blog line-up and asked for a preview. So, I have decided to publish it early, but it will be updated pretty regularly over the next six to eight months.
DRIPS are dividend reinvestment plans, whereby some or all of a cash payment is reinvested as shares of common stock. They allow investors to benefit from a compounding effect: earning dividends on previously issued dividends. The advantages and disadvantages of DRIP programs are discussed later. The process of how to set up a DRIP directly with a company; that is, without using a brokerage service, is also described.
The first question that someone might ask is "what is a dividend"? A dividend is usually cash paid to a shareholder. There are other types of dividends (companies could give more shares, even transfer tangible property to shareholders), but for the purposes of this discussion, we'll stick to cold hard cash.
]]>The PE ratio is one of the more commonly available pieces of information about a publicly traded company. The calculation is simple: it's the share price divided by the annual earnings per share. In a sense, the PE ratio is a way to normalize the price of a company to its earnings and allows a person to compare one company with another. For example, if company ABC is trading at $50 a share and generates $5 in earnings in a 12-month period, it has a PE ratio of 10 (50 ÷ 5 = 10), while company XYZ is trading at $18 a share, but produces only $1 a share in earnings, it has a PE ratio of 18 (18 ÷ 1 = 18), if the companies are very similiar, at first blush you might say that ABC is trading at a better value than is XYZ, of course more analysis is needed, but this result alone should convince a person to investigate further to see if this difference is warranted. This issue will be touched on later and discussed in more detail in another blog.
The PE ratio can often behave differently for cyclical companies. Generally speaking, conservative investors often shy away from a high PE ratio and consider buying a company when the PE is depressed. Cyclical companies have sales and earnings that tend to undulate over time: they follow the business cycle, moving up and down in synch. The PE ratio, the price of the stock divided by its earnings per share, changes over time too. Let’s consider two extremes: at the onset of a recovery and when the economy starts to slide into recession.
There are two types of option: puts and calls. Each option contract has a similar structure. For a given company, only the price and time period differ. Let's used the hypothetical XYZ Company again and discuss a Call Option and a Put Option.
Net Income is another term for profit. You'll hear a range of different was of discussing income; for example, operating income is a term that's discussed often. However, Net Income has a special meaning. In another paper called Dollars and Sense, a company called Clayton Homes was used as an example. Clayton Homes no longer exists as a public company; nonetheless, its income statement from 1999 will be used as an example.
A margin account is something similar to a checking account with overdraft protection! With a margin account, you can purchase shares even if you don’t have cash; the only thing you need to have is marginable securities in your account.
]]>Short selling is the sale of something that you don’t own. It’s most often associated with the sale of common stock. You’ll hear on TV reports about a “short squeeze,” or that the shorts are hurting.
]]>Most of us simply don’t believe this theory. I don't. I like the concept a lot, but personal experience leads me to believe that its a theory that's not fully formed. For one thing. If it’s true, why did stocks adjust so precipitously in October of 1987? In the US the markets are as efficient as markets can be; however, there does seem to be an element of the irrational every now and again. The stock market seems to be efficient in the long-term and pretty wacky in the short run. It was Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor, who said that in the short term, the market is a voting machine; while in the long term, it’s a weighing machine.
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