Description

Capital One Investing until last year was called ShareBuilder and the firm is now part of U.S. banking giant Capital One. While many investors do not take the likes of Capital One Investing seriously, it has its place in the world of online investing. ShareBuilder made a name for itself with its Automatic Investing plans, which allow customers to take advantage of dollar-cost-averaging by arranging to have a set amount invested in stocks, ETFs, and some mutual funds weekly at a relatively low cost of $3.95 per trade. With ShareBuilder's plan clients can only make investments on Tuesdays.

Capital One brokerage does not have minimum balance requirements, or inactivity or maintenance fees. Investors can open a cash account with $0 down. Real time stock and ETF trades are priced at a about average in the industry rate - $6.95. Mutual funds have a very good $19.95 per transaction rate.

Capital One Investing offers a potentially helpful service called Express Funding. The idea there is that client doesn’t actually have to have the funds already transferred into their Capital One Investing account, but can instead include a (pending) funds transfer instruction as part of the order entry. This costs an extra $6.95 per transaction - doubling the base trading fee, and allows clients to buy investments whenever there is an opportunity without waiting for funds transfer. Funds transfers into clients trading account are otherwise free and fast or even instantaneous if moving funds in from Capital One 360 account.

Unlike almost all other online brokers, Capital One Investing doesn't offer pre-market or after-hours trading which is a real problem for many active investors. The firm is also one of the few discount online brokerages that doesn't allow shorting stocks. Coupled with very basic trading tools and slow executions, it makes the company a terrible choice for traders and active investors.

Capital One Brokerage Pros

• Low cost automatic investing plan
• Free DRIPs (dividend and capital gains reinvestment)
• No fee IRA accounts
• No account maintenance or inactivity fees
• Easy and cost effective way to create a portfolio with Portfolio Builder tool
• $0 to open cash account, $2,000 for margin account
• Good banking services (savings, checking accounts; debit and credit cards) provided by parent company Capital One (Capital One 360 promotions)

Capital One Brokerage Cons

• No extended hours trading
• Shorting is not allowed
• Basic trading tools and no trading platform
• $49.95 fee on any no-load, no-transaction fee mutual fund held less than 90 days
• Automatic Investing plan trades are made only on Tuesdays
• $0.007 per share surcharge on real-time trades on penny stocks (subject to a maximum of 15% of the principal amount of the trade, but no less than the base commission)

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