Best online service for buying stocks?

[Ohioguy]

I've had a Scottrade account for years. It lets me buy and sell
stocks for $7. I put a little more than $350 a year into each of my
kids' custodial Roth IRA accounts I've set up. Typically, between
August and December, I re-evaluate the stocks in each of the portfolios,
to make sure they still appear to be value stocks. If they have
appreciated to the point where I no longer feel they are a value, AND
the dividend is either low or future growth appears limited, I'll sell
the stock and look for a new one that I feel is a value. At this point,
since we are still talking about just a few hundred (for the newest) to
a few thousand for my 6 year old, I've held off on selling, since I
realize that if I buy and sell too much chasing returns, I could
actually eat into the portfolio performance.

Anyway, today I saw an ad for sharebuilder, advertising $4 trades. I
thought, "Hmm - maybe I've been paying too much for trades?" So I
looked into it, and the $4 is only for automated weekly or monthly
trades. That would mean spending a minimum of $48 a year to buy,
instead of the ~ $6 to $12 a year I currently spend through Scottrade.
Not a deal, so I forgot about that.

However, it did get me thinking - is Scottrade truly the lowest
priced online place for buying and selling stocks if you just do it a
few times a year, and are working with smaller amounts? I thought I
would ask here to see if any of you had experiences you could share.

[terrable]

"Ohioguy" <no...@none.net> wrote in message
news:kM5Zm.851$mr6...@newsfe08.iad...

Two cheap brokers are SogoTrade at $3.00 and optionshouse at $2.95. Mixed
reviews for both as some people like them and some people hate them.

[SoCalMike]

Ohioguy wrote:

> However, it did get me thinking - is Scottrade truly the lowest priced
> online place for buying and selling stocks if you just do it a few times
> a year, and are working with smaller amounts? I thought I would ask
> here to see if any of you had experiences you could share.

i looked into sharebuilder through costco when i was researching
alternatives right before the crash last year. scottrade was the best
alternative for what i wanted to do, which was primarily buy and hold
for a while. id been waiting for a time to jump in and buy. so far, so
good. up 40% since then with my only regret being i wish id bought more
ford stock. its quintupled in price since i bought my 400 shares.