indexfundfan @ indextown

I opened a Sogoinvest account some time in August and have been adding money periodically to the account. So far, I have not made any withdrawals from this account.

During this time, a few people have voiced concerns of the “hoops” that they have to jump through to get their money out from the Sogoinvest account (for example, see Raj’s experience HERE and Sogo-Nogo’s experience HERE and HERE). This got me concerned since I want to know if I can make a timely ACH withdrawal whenever I need to.

On Sogoinvest’s website, it was stated that

• Currently ACH withdrawals require a completed withdrawal form. Online ACH requests are coming soon.

But this message must have been there for about four months now, and the online ACH withdrawal is nowhere in sight. I asked Sogoinvest what’s up with the online ACH withdrawal. They replied promptly. Here’s what it says

• We are still working on developing online ACH withdrawal requests to be available for our SogoInvest customers. We have had other things in development, our latest update to SogoInvest, SogoElite, which has caused this to be put on hold. Currently you have to fax in an ACH withdrawal request for ACH withdrawals to be initiated.

At the same time, Zecco is starting to look more interesting because of the generally OK experience that users have. For example, see ML’s post Testing driving Zecco.com (read also the comments). Also, it seems like their IRA accounts are finally going live some time in January 2007. In addition, their FAQ has clearly explained some of the reservations I had with using Zecco.com, two of which are

• Do you make money on the spread between bid and ask?
  Zecco Trading does not make markets and therefore does not participate in the spread between the bid and ask on any security. All of our orders are entered as agency orders and are therefore never marked up by us. We route all orders through our clearing firm Penson Financial Services who then automatically routes them for best execution.

• Does Zecco Trading receive payment for order flow? Or sell it’s order flow?
  Zecco Trading does not receive payment for order flow. All orders are routed and executed by Penson Financial Services.

One question I still have though is the statement

• Please keep in mind that only the first account of any account type is eligible for our Free Trading program. Any multiple accounts of the same type with the same registration are not eligible for the free trading program.

Since I would possibly like to open an IRA and a taxable account, I would like to know if both accounts would be eligible for the free trade program. I sent Zecco an email and will post the reply here when I receive it.

Update: I received Zecco’s reply and I am pleased with the answer:

• Thank you for contacting Zecco Trading. You are able to open both the IRA account and Individual Account. They are of different account types; and therefore, they are eligible for free trading program.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 11:03 am and is filed under Brokerage, Investing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.