Buy low, sell high. Is the market low enough yet to start putting my $8 trades to work? That is what I thought last summer, but then again, you never know.

Stars in my eyes - caveats
Like the rest of us, I began to have stars and Beemers in my eyes last spring with the rising market. It was so easy to make trades with my Ameritrade account. Just sit at my computer and click and buy, click and buy. Occasionally the site would get hung up, at least a couple of years ago, when I tried to see how much my account was ahead for the day. "There is no information on your account" or some such irritating message. I never see these anymore, but perhaps that is because trading volume is down and there is not as much traffic on the servers.

My history - fees
I have been an Ameritrade account holder for over two years, transferring part of my money from American Century. The reason I did this was because I had a local branch close by and the lower cost per trade. The cost to trade is $8 for computer trades, $12 touchtone trades and $18 for "broker assisted" trades. If the website should fail you for any reason, you can mention this to your broker and get the $8 fee for a broker assisted trade. I read in the local paper this week that Ameritrade will be implementing a $2.00 charge for paper confirmations. Each time you get a confirmation of a trade in the mail, you will be charged $2.00. This would make each trade cost $20.00 instead of the current $16.00 ($8 to buy and $8 to sell.) Also, each time your stock changes names or mergers such as in the AOL/Time Warner merger, they charge a $15 fee to change the paperwork.

Trading online
I have traded all three ways. The easiest is to log in to their site and click onto the trade tab at the top of the page. It will ask you if you want to buy or sell, how many shares and the symbol of the stock you wish to purchase. It will also ask you if you want a market order or a limit order. A market order is if you want to buy a stock at what it is currently selling at. A limit order is if you want to buy a stock after it has dropped to a certain price. This is not guaranteed, but it has become increasingly common in today's market.

If you choose a limit order, ($5 more) it will ask you if you want it for a "day" or "good until cancelled." I once mistakenly chose "day" when I wanted to buy Home Depot at $38 (since split to $19). I misunderstood that, thinking that it would be executed during the daytime. WRONG! I went for a whole month, thinking that I'd purchased it at the lower price that it DID hit. The other option, that I SHOULD have clicked upon was "good til cancelled (GTC)." As I understand it, that means that your order will stay in place until the end of the following month.

Once you place your order, you can go to My Account tab and go to Transactions or Review Orders. Here you can tell what you bought and the price that you actually paid for it.

On their website you can also see how many shares you have of a particular stock and the current selling price. The one thing they have changed in the past year is not telling you how much your portfolio has changed THAT DAY. Perhaps that is a good thing, lately. In its place, you can get email alerts, which tell you about three times per day, how much your account has gone up or down. This is done on both a bar chart and on a spreadsheet type format. The stocks with the most movement are on top, and they descend downward.

There is also research available here, you can see what sectors and companies have had the largest gains and losses over a time frame. There are other helpful tools as well, which I admit I haven't explored much lately.

Our accounts
We have six accounts with this firm. My husband and I each have Roth accounts and traditional IRAs. As well we have a cash or marginable account and I also have a Gifts to Minors account for my grandson. As we live close, there is a $500 minimum balance for our IRAs and margin account. There is no minimum for our Gifts to Minors account. There have been several promotions on the media recently to open an account with $500 and get several trades either free or 1/2 price.

Bonds/mutual funds
As well as a brokerage side you can purchase bonds, no minimum balance, just what you want to buy. If you want to purchase $500 in bonds, you can do that. They have well over 9,000 mutual funds available for purchase. As long as the fund you wish to purchase allows other companies to buy and sell for them, you can purchase them through Ameritrade for $18.00 plus the load if it is a loaded fund (one that charges a sales fee) for either a purchase or a sale. If it is a non load fund, you just pay the $18 to buy but not to sell.

One caveat: I recently contributed to my 2000 IRA. I got a letter about 3 weeks later which invited me to contribute to my IRA, when I had already maxed out my contribution. I went to the office, where I found out that my contribution had been credited to my 2001 taxes instead.

Customer service
Ameritrade has 24 hour customer service telephone support at (800) 669-3900. Yes, I am a stockholder in the company with an original split adjusted purchase price of $3.00 per share.

I hope that I have given you a little insight into Ameritrade and how it works. Bring on that peach tea!

For information on another one of my brokerages, you may access the following link for Fidelity Investments:

http://www.epinions.com/content_17647898244

I hope I've been helpful. Thanks for reading.

Update
I have recently learned that Ameritrade will start charging an inactive account fee. I am not sure when it will start, but if you have fewer than 4 trades in the previous 6 months, it will cost you $15 per quarter for a service fee. They may start charging if your account is less than $2,000 as well, I'm not sure. You may want to ask your account rep about this. I am not sure if this includes IRAs or not.

Recommended: Yes