E*TRADE vs. Merrill Edge

Being used other panels, E*TRADE has an edge on getting things done related trading, selling and purchasing at a great extend, it is very easy to use, provided that the users have very less knowledge in Share Markets, the tool has a minimal platform as. well as advanced features to work with multiple people. However, there is room for improvement in terms of Management features and Support after the employee leaves.

Incentivized

Merrill Edge is best suited for beginner and advanced traders. Whether you are buying stocks and holding or day trading, I've always had no issues working with the Merrill platform to manage my trades. My favorite part is that it seamlessly aligns with Bank of America so money movement is instantaneous.

• I like their sell orders that allow you to set a price or percentage as a stop loss.
• Their dashboard is easy to use and gives you some quick info.
• I also like E*TRADE's reports for gains and losses.
• Moving funds into and out of your accounts is pretty simple with E*TRADE.

Incentivized

• Integration with Bank of America.
• Customer Service is fantastic.
• Free to use with a minimum asset holding.
• You can customize the views for your holdings.

• summary page needs to have more details like it doesn't show current market price for an option purchased
• purchase or sell needs to be user friendly so it takes less time.

Incentivized

• They only give clients 2 days to cover margin maintenance calls, even though FINRA (the regulator) allows them to give clients 5 business days. For example, TD Ameritrade gives use 4 to 5 business days if there is a margin maintenance call. That is between 100% and 150% more time than Merrill gives. Even worse, Merrill doesn't notify clients of a margin call until 10am, the day after the margin call started at 4pm. That's 16 hours into the 48 hour period, so 33% of the 48-hour period to cover the call has already passed by the time Merrill notifies you. I asked a rep why this is, and he said that their computer systems don't work in real-time and operate on a batch system, which doesn't update until the next day.
• Thus, even though they have an outdated computer system that delays notice by 33%, they still choose to have a 2-day requirement rather than switch to a 3 or 4 or 5 day requirement. FINRA requires brokerages to give clients a minimum of 2 days to cover. So Merrill is only giving clients the absolute minimum required by the government. They could give clients 150% more time, but they don't.
• Their phone prompt system is poor, and much of the time results in you talking to someone who doesn't know how to, or can't handle your reason for calling.
• If you place an extended hours trade, it always has to expire at the end of the day. By contrast, there are other brokerages where you can place a trade and make it be "good to cancel" and applicable to both the regular hours and extended hours. For example, if we want to buy 100 shares of Apple at a certain price, we can place an order for it that last for 3 months (good til cancel) and the order stays active from 7am until 8pm for the next 3 months. If the price moves to our buy point in extended hours, we fill the order.
• But at Merrill, to do the same, we have to: a) place an extended hours order early in the morning, and it always expires when the regular session starts. b) thus we have to place the order again at 930am so it will be active til 4pm. c) then we have to place another new order at 4pm for the 4pm to 8pm session. And that always expires at the end of the day.
• Thus, for each order that we want to fill, we have to place 3 trades per days, and be online at the start of 3 different sessions to place those trades. Because there are many stocks we want to buy or sell at certain price points, this means a huge amount of effort ... plus being online early in the morning, and a multiple specific times each day. If someone wants to schedule a meeting with me, it can't overlap with 930 to 10am, or 4 to 430pm or the half hour at the start of the opening session. Another issue with this is that it often can take 15 minutes to place all of the trades, so if the share prices moves into our buy/sell range in the first 10 minutes of a session, we can miss out on filling the order because the order for that particular stock wasn't entered in yet for that session.
• I notified Merrill of this several years ago, and then two other times every 1 or 2 years ... and they still haven't fixed their approach. As a result, I've moved most of our holdings to another brokerage that handles it correctly.
• They don't improve their system, and they don't seem to listen to customer feedback. I'm experienced at website development, and it would take a single web developer only about 1 or 2 weeks of work to fix their system so that clients can place one order and have it be active in regular and extended hours for the next 3 months ... versus having to place 3 orders a day for 90 days (basically 270 orders) to accomplish the same thing. They probably have more than a dozen web developers. But they don't do improvements that would save customers a ton of time and effort.

robinhood is similar to e-trade but they are geared more to bitcoin and companies that may not be offered on E*TRADE because they are off-market companies.

Incentivized

I rate Merrill a 1 out of 10 compared to the ratings of these brokerages I've used with 10 being best and 1 worst: Interactive Brokers: 7 Etrade: 7 TD Ameritrade: 10 Merrill Edge: 1 We rate TDA best and have moved most of our holdings over to them for several reasons including: 1) You can place a single order and have it be Good Til Cancelled (for 3 months) active in both extended hours and regular session. Saves a ton of time, and it also results in better fills of orders at better prices. 2) They give 4 to 5 days to handle margin calls. 3) They regularly improve their platform to save customers time, while also giving them more options/features to do more and more things.

• Limit how much you want invest.
• This is an open trade website and there is a risk of losing your money based on your investments.
• If you make some sound investments and keep yourself within a budgeted spending limit there is the opportunity to make money on e-trade.

Incentivized

• We've lost a lot of time and effort due to the problems I described
• We've lost some money due to some trades not getting filled