Jamie Heller
After Y2K, mutual funds are starting to look real appealing to some stock-burned investors.
Where to buy funds? Strange as it may seem, that same online broker who facilitated your stock trading might be a good place to buy mutual funds. While investors can buy funds from fund companies, buying through an online broker offers the aggregation advantage. Your fund info is right there with your stock info, both online and on paper. With tax time looming, one statement is no small convenience. But brokers differ in their fund offerings. What Works is looking at which online broker is best when it comes to funds. You can help by telling me what you've found. Does your broker offer a strong selection of funds? How about "no transaction fee" funds, where there's no cost for buying and selling? What about services like screeners to help you select funds? How up-to-date is your broker's fund data? Does your broker do a good job of combining your stock and fund info for accounting? Please email me at whatworks@thestreet.com with your take on your broker's fund fares -- these aspects or any others important to you. Please include your full name and which broker you use. Meanwhile, I remain on the case on the topics of streaming quotes and alert services, so if you have any experiences with those, please do email me as well.Ameritrade Inches Forward in Portfolio Tracking
Ameritrade, a broker I've faulted for not offering real-time portfolio updating, announced last week it's now doing just that. Ameritrade investors can now get real-time portfolio balances and positions. The company also announced some new "views" of the portfolio. Ameritrade users, I'm eager to hear how well you think these new tools work. Please email me at whatworks@thestreet.com. For a list of other brokers that do and don't offer real-time portfolio updating, see this earlier story.Waterhouse Goes High End, Finally
At most brokerages, investors who trade most get the goodies. Now, the same theory applies at TD Waterhouse. Not exactly an online brokerage trendsetter, Waterhouse is finally rolling out its own "select" offering for active investors. (It's in a special preview program now, to be available to all eligible customers mid-January.) After 36 trades a quarter, you get lower commissions and streaming quotes, as well as an integrated trading "cockpit" that pulls various account info into one screen. A whole host of other treats accrue after 72 trades per quarter. But Waterhouse isn't exactly raising the bar here. The "select" Waterhouse trader gets market orders for $9.95, about the same as Datek's $9.99. And at Datek, that's the price even if you're not an active trader or if you're placing a limit order
. As for streaming quotes, you can get plenty at Datek, even if you don't have an account. Waterhouse users, please
let me know how compelling you find your new cockpit. Schwab Beefing Up on Bonds
Could the timing be better? Just as crushed stock investors start considering bonds, Schwab's added a new service designed to get bond investors better executions. The online broker has hooked up with a company called eSpeed to help get individuals better prices on U.S. Treasuries and agency bonds. eSpeed provides electronic access to the bond market; it says it has signed deals with another dozen brokers, including Muriel Siebert and Scottrade. John Ladensack, senior veep at Schwab for fixed income, says Schwab will offer independent bond research on its site later this month. Schwab bond buyers, please let me know if you notice a difference in pricing.MSN v. Yahoo! on News
I continue to receive mail on the online portfolio tracker showdown -- MSN MoneyCentral vs. Quicken.com vs. Yahoo!. (What Works gave the nod to MoneyCentral.) Scott Womack of Terre Haute, Ind., is a MoneyCentral user but has a gripe: "The news is very incomplete, and often old. I have to check Yahoo! frequently to make sure I get all the press releases for my stocks." I did my own little test, checking the news on about seven stocks over two days on MoneyCentral and Yahoo!. My conclusion: not much difference. In fact, in one case, Tuesday morning's news that Bed Bath & Beyond was downgraded by Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown showed up right away in a MoneyCentral "advisor FYI alert." It didn't show up on Yahoo! until noon that day. Still, I think I know what might be behind Womack's frustration. MoneyCentral has earnings and analyst action info from Zacks.com and Briefing.com, plus many other sources, in these FYI alerts. But when it comes to general news sources, MSN's source list is far slimmer than Yahoo!'s. Here's a comparison of the news sources on each:| Online Portfolio News Sources |
| MSN Money Central |
| Briefing.com |
| Business Wire |
| PR Newswire |
| Reuters |
| Yahoo! |
| AP (various wires) |
| BCE Emergis |
| Briefing.com |
| Business Wire |
| Canada NewsWire |
| Canadian Press |
| CBS MarketWatch |
| CCBN.com |
| CCN Disclosure |
| CNET (various CNET sources) |
| EDGAR Online (various EDGAR sources) |
| Forbes.com |
| IndividualInvestor.com |
| Industry Standard |
| Internet Wire |
| Morningstar.com |
| Motley Fool |
| NetEarnings |
| NewsFactor |
| ON24 |
| PR Newswire |
| PrimeZone Media Network |
| Red Herring |
| Reuters (various) |
| Standard & Poor's |
| StreetEvents |
| StreetFusion |
| The Wall Street Journal Online |
| TheStreet.com |
| UpsideToday |
| Yahoo! Broadcast |
| Yahoo! FinanceVision |
| ZDNet |
| Source: MSN MoneyCentral, Yahoo |
RSS
