Category: Money

TradeKing

Customer-driven TradeKing is an award-winning online discount broker that charges a flat commission for any kind of equity order – be it market, limit or broker assisted. TradeKing only charges $4.95 per trade; Zecco is slightly lower at $4.50 per trade but has pricing tiers for different types of trade including $19.95 for broker-assisted orders.

Trade King charges only $0.65 for an option contract. There is no minimum to open or maintain an account, but margin accounts require $2,000 for equities and $25,000 for writing naked puts and $100,000 for writing naked calls. A naked option trade is executed by someone who does not have a position – long or short – in the underlying stock and is exposed to considerable risk.
Award-winning Customer Service

TradeKing is pretty nifty and has garnered awards from industry standard like Barrons and Smart Money in 2008 and 2009 for outstanding customer service – you are assured of speaking to a live person in minutes without having to punch a lot of buttons, expect an email reply within 2 hours on a trading day. Better yet, you can even have a live chat to get immediate feedback if you are still confused about an issue.

While every brokerage is obliged to get its customer the best price available, that does not always happen especially with a volatile stock. TradeKing promises best execution – such as speed of transaction and execution price, failing which, your trade is free. There are some exemptions to this, such as advanced orders and stop orders and it is best to be aware of what these are.

Impressive Suite of Free Tools

Another of TradeKing’s appeal lies in its easy user interface arsenal of free trading tools for stocks, options, EFTS and mutual funds. For stocks and options, it has scanners that will trawl through the market for those names that fit your criteria. You can save the criteria and not have to input them each and every time. There are useful interactive tools with views that you customize, such as easily zooming from short to long-term horizons, drawing trend lines or comparing performances against the stock indices.

It has intuitive tools for options trading. In the options scanner, there are 25 criteria to define the options you are looking for. There is a companion options strategy tool that will devise options strategies from basic puts and calls to straddles, strangles and collars. You can place an order without having to change screens.

Uses the profit and loss calculator to figure out the potential for making or losing money from possible or existing positions, and a probability calculator to work out how likely it is your stock or option will reach touch your desired price. Additionally, there is a very powerful tax manager which processes all transactions and corporate actions, works out, before you trade, short and long term gains or losses, and churns out tax reports on demand.

Special Offers and Education

TradeKing provides a whole range of educational materials in a variety of media such as videos mp3s, text and podcasts so that you can down load a seminar and listen to it on your iPod. Materials go from basic to sophisticated trading strategies. It is leveraging social media and has a trader’s community where you can follow the top trader, ask questions or chat with like-minded investors.

Currently, TradeKing is running some very attractive promotions. It will: –

• Reimburse up to $150 in account transfer fees
• Pay you $50 for every referral that opens an account with $1,000 and executes you a trade. The $50 bonus shows up in your non-Ira account.

Although there are slightly cheaper discount brokers around, TradeKing has a very impressive all round service. Operating since 2005, TradeKing has earned well-deserved kudos from both users and reviewers.

One of the immediate changes which will result from the historic 2010 health care bill will be a $250 payment to help with prescriptions.  There are quite a few Americans who have a drug coverage gap known as the “doughnut hole”.   This gap in Medicare D Drug benefit program means that assistance from Medicare for different levels of annual drug costs is not consistent through different levels of annual costs.

Right now the following costs (which include drug costs and Medicare payments)  are covered as shown:

• $0 to $295 – No coverage – patient pays 100% of the costs.
• $295 to $896.25 – 75% is covered by Medicare.
• $896.25 to $4,350.25 – nothing is covered by Medicare – This is known as the “doughnut hole“.
• $4,325.26 and up – 95% covered by Medicare.

Medicare Part D is a program to help subsidize the prescription costs of Americans and has been in place since January 1, 2006.  It was introduced as part of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003.

Is this $250 rebate permanent?

No, but the drug companies will be lowering the prices on their brand-name drugs by 50% starting in 2011 and 75% by 2020 which will completely close the doughnut hole so this rebate won’t be needed anymore.

How do I claim my $250 prescription payment?

If you are eligible for the tax free $250 rebate, then Medicare will automatically send it to you.  You don’t need to do anything.  No forms, no phone calls – nothing!

When will I get the $250 rebate check?

The $250 checks will begin to get mailed starting in mid-June of 2010.  You only get a check if you are in the “doughnut hole” coverage gap.  The checks will be mailed throughout the year, but only to new people who have reached the coverage gap.  You can only get a maximum of $250 and no more.

$250 Drug Rebate Scams

Please be aware that there are people who are trying to scam seniors into handing over their personal information by telling them it’s necessary to get the rebate.  This is not true.  Nobody should call you about the rebate – if they do, then don’t give them any information at all.

On March 3rd, President Obama signed the Temporary Extension Act of 2010 HR4691 after it was passed by Senate with a resounding 78-19 vote.  This bill only creates extensions for one month – until the end of March but it will provide much needed relief for many unemployed Americans.

There were two main sections of this bill which affect many Americans

COBRA extension 2010

COBRA is a medical health care plan for unemployed people which had been 65% subsidized by the government as part of the Stimulus effort of last year.  The unemployed person pays 35% of the COBRA premium and the government pays the other 65% for up to 15 months.

This subsidy had been scheduled to run out for people getting laid off after February 28.  Given the very high national unemployment rate (10.6%) it only makes sense that this program extension is quite necessary.

To qualify for this extension you must have been laid off between September of 2008 and March 31, 2010.

Unemployment Benefits Extension 2010

There have been numerous unemployment benefit extensions as a result of the stimulus package from last year and subsequent extensions as well.  Further extensions would be provided as part of this bill.

Passing of this Bill was delayed by Republican senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky who single-handedly held up the bill because of deficit concerns.

New info

$250 Prescription Drug Rebate Payment For Doughnut Hole Medicaid Gap

It looks like the proposed $250 Social Security stimulus check which was announced by President Obama late last year is unfortunately not going to be sent out.

On March 3, the Senate voted down the proposal for a $250 bonus check by a score of 50-47.

The reason that the plan was voted down was because of the cost. It was estimated that sending out the $250 checks to Social Security recipients as well as SSI recipients would have cost about $14 billion dollars.  Considering the current deficit is at record levels, the Senate decided that some cuts had to be made.  The other reason is that the Social Security payments are indexed to inflation which is why they were increase 5.8% last year, so to give a bonus when inflation is low, defeats the purpose of the indexing.

Just last week Senator Bunning held up another important vote on extending long term unemployment benefits in a rather bizarre one-man show of fiscal restraint.

Will Social Security Payments Be Paid If United States Defaults On Debt?

The government is on pace to run up a record $1.6 trillion deficit this year because of various stimulus spending including $66 billion dollars on various unemployment extension benefits.

The $250 Social Security payment was being considered to make up for the fact that the Social Security payout did not have a cost-of-living increase this year because of low inflation.

The $250 check was paid out last year to Social Security recipients, SSI recipients and a few other groups as well.

Is there any chance of another $250 stimulus check this year?

This Bill is dead in the water but that doesn’t mean a similar Bill couldn’t be created.  I personally doubt that there will be another check this year but if the cost-of-living increase for 2011 is zero or close to zero percent then I think the odds would be quite good that another $250 bonus check would be approved.

How many senior citizens does this effect?

There are about 55 million senior citizens receiving Social Security who would have been eligible for this bonus payment.  Although the check amount is not huge, it will be interesting to see what effect, if any this will have on future elections.  It was widely expected that this stimulus payment would be paid out by March of 2010 and there will be an awful lot of disappointed, and possibly angry senior citizens who might be thinking that they have been short-changed $250 by this vote.