For what is worth, I am moving to Wells Fargo’s free trade platform. I don’t trade often but I don’t see any reason to pay the $3 when I can trade for free.

Vacman, if you have $25k in securities to spare and DCA very regularly, you might want to look closer at Wells Fargo’s latest offering.

Foliofn has all the right tools for DCA for index portfolio.
They have both dollar based investing and withdrawal. They
provide automatic portfolio rebalancing. They also provide
check writing. Sogoinvest doesn’t provide these.

The fee is $199/year, $19 more than sogo. Not bad with large investment amount.
But the question is what happens if they close the shop?
Will their clients need to get their investment money from SIPC?
I see in sipc’s web site several brokerage/investment companies
cases were handled before. This one concern may be the reason Vanguard
has so many clients compared to Foliofn.

One thing you can consider might be to stagger your investments, say out of the 9 ETFs, invest in 4 in Jan, the other 5 in Feb, and back to the first 4 in March and so on.

If you do so, you can look into using Sogoinvest’s Gold plan which for the price of $10 a month, gives you 5 free automatic trades. I believe their automatic trades are dollar-based.

Thanks for your feedback.

If ETF is bought with in the daily price range,
I am ok with it as its a periodic investment.
I hope this is the case.

Is there a way to lower yearly cost (lower than $180).
Zecco doesn’t charge commission. But they don’t offer
dollar based investment.

Thanks.
Venkatesh

I like the look of your ETF portfolio: 35% US, 35% foreign and 30% bonds, and very diversified. The only negative I can think of are the transaction fees if you need to invest in 9 ETFs every month.

Based on that, I can see why you want to use buyandhold — one fixed fee of $15 lets you make any number of purchases every month.

I used them back in 2000; and I guess I can say that the brokerage works but I remember I do tend not to get the best fill prices since buyandhold uses essentially market orders to fill your purchases. If the ETF is thinly traded, you could lose out quite a bit on the spread between the bid-ask prices.

You also need to consider that $15 adds up quite quickly to $180 a year.

Planning to dollar cost in to each month:
SPY 14%; VTV 7%; IWC 7%; VBR 7%; EFA 7%; EFV 7%; DLS 14%; VWO 7%; 30% AGG

I see you that you have used buyandhold. What do you think about them?
Do you suggest any other option?

Thanks.

For myself, if I ever need to close the Sogoinvest account, I would use the free ACAT out to transfer out my shares in-kind, and side-stepping the delayed ACH out problem.

I requested an ACH withdrawal on 10/30/06 and am still waiting today, 11/17/06. I’ve made numerous phone calls and left messages for numerous individuals, each time I call they ask if I can call back the next morning. Today when I called they say they processed the ACH to my checking account on 11/7/06, however upon logging in to my sogoinvest account I see my balance is still in the account and I’ve seen no deposit in my checking account.

I’d say get your money out while you can. Also file complaints with the better business bureau, federal trade comission and new york state attorney general’s office.