Does TD Ameritrade Offer Commission-Free Trade for their Existing Clients?

TD Ameritrade (or simply Ameritrade) is one of the two stock brokers (the other one is Sogotrade – my investments with Sogotrade is minimal) that I have chosen for my trading and holding of stocks in the US market. I chose Ameritrade among other discount brokers because;
-    they are one of the well-know  and reputable discount broker in the US
-    they offer CDs and Bonds (Sogotrade which only offers stocks and ETF)
-    they are listed in the US stock market so I know they couldn’t be a fly-by-night company.
-    a good customer support, good trading interface, and other minor things.
-    relatively low initial deposit, no inactivity fee and no minimum trade requirement

Maybe the only set-back of Ameritrade compared to other discount brokers like Sogotrade and Scottrade is that their online stock trade commission is relatively higher, well, atleast for a small investor like me. Ameritrade stock trade commission as of today is $9.99 per trade while Sogotrade and Scottrade have $3.0 and $7.0 per trade, respectively.  For small time investor who trades $500 worth of stocks per trade, $9.99 commission is not negligible.

Does TD Ameritrade Offers Free Trade for their Existing Clients?
With that quite high commission rate, a free trade promo is a catch for small time investors. Ameritrade offers 30 day free trades for new account with initial deposit of $1,000.

But what if you are an existing client, can you still get a free trade? Well, Ameritrade did not promoted this but I do received a 500 free trades just recently even if I am already with Ameritrade for more than a month now.  I believe that this commission-free trade is not a regular perks for existing clients because it just popped-out in my account home while I am doing my occasional purchase of stocks without prior notice at all. The 500 commission-free trades condition says;

“Commission-free trades are subject to expiration dates and may be limited to specific types of transactions (equity, web, IVR, broker-assisted, etc). Please contact a Client Services representative for information regarding your commission-free trades. Free trades will be listed here until applied to the execution of a qualifying order.”

That is, you’ll never know when it will be offered and you don’t know when it will expire – just like a random bonus. Anyway, this is a very good gift from Ameritrade, and I like them for that.

Filed in: Stocks and Stock Market
Local date: March, 2010

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