Cancellations - I cancelled my FolioFN brokerage account
I cancelled the account with FolioFN, which has been my broker for almost 2 years now. FolioFn started off great for a small investor like me - they didn’t have any minimums, charged $4 per window transaction (and $15 for real-time trade, if you wanted to), and in large letters they said NO INACTIVITY CHARGES. Which sounds super if you’re the type of person not willing to get involved in stock market too strongly, but still speculating about growing your portfolio by maybe $100-200 a month. Also, a broker like this allows you to sit quietly on the portfolio if for some reason you decide to quit the stock market and just allow the current poirtfolio to grow.
Unfortunately, at some point they decided to change their single most prominent feature, which attracted me, which was the lack of inactivity fees. They introduced the fee of $15 every 3 months, which can be substantial percentagewise, if one’s portfolio is only a couple thousand dollars. Sort of like Toys’R'Us selling their toy division. I decided to go with Scottrade, who had an offline office in my city, didn’t have any inactivity fees, and charged only $7 a trade. So far they treated me good, and I am pretty happy about the switch.
July 11th, 2005 at 3:27 pm #Annie Muss
Besides the obnoxious and poorly informed customer service reps, I find foliofn to be a powerful investment tool.
July 15th, 2005 at 9:49 am #Alex
I don’t know, I do my research on Yahoo! Finance and then just use Scottrade. It’s a worry-free account with them without those inactivity charges.
December 30th, 2005 at 11:12 am #Patrick
Alex,
Sorry to hear you’ve left Foliofn - I’ve been using them since May, 2001. I’ve never run into their inactivity fee as I opted for one of the pricing plans that allows so many trades per month at a given fee. Also, checking their site shows that the inactivity fee will be waived if there are a minimum of 4 trades in the prior quarter, That’s just a tad more than one per month. The $299 annual fee (monthly) is cheaper than 4 $7 trades at Scottrade so the more you make above 4 per month the more cost effective Foliofn becomes. So the 26 trades I made cost $0.94 each vs $182 at Scottrade. But, you have to find what works best for you. Best wishes for your investment success in 2006!
December 30th, 2005 at 11:49 am #Alex
Agreed, FolioFN has its advantages for certain investors. In my case I either traded like mad, with dozens of transactions during a month, where FolioFN made sense, or just let my account stay dormant, in which case their inactivity fees just felt like losing money over nothing.
January 18th, 2006 at 8:01 pm #javiero
I just open an account on folifn and so far it is good and a lot cheaper then my actual broker sharebuilder
I was thinking to open account on Scottrade until I found foliofn,thanks
Also I want to let you know I went for the silver plan wow!
February 1st, 2006 at 9:30 pm #Alexander
Where else can you rebalance your portfolio at 10 or more times a month (yeah, some crazy dudes do that) for $200?
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:51 pm #chung
if you go with buffett way which invest for the long term, you don’t need to have so much transacation. Scottrade have offline office which allow you fund your account in their office. The new balance will show up at next day. If you are too cheap for 7 dollars, you may invite your friends and family sign up. So that both sides can reward 3 transactions for free.