Kevin McCormally: I am Kevin McCormally of Kiplinger's, and I am here with Manuel Schiffres, the Executive Editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine to talk about discount brokerages. Manuel, as an investor how do I choose the best discount brokerage for me?
Manuel Schiffres: It really depends on the kind of investor you are. You may only be interested in having the low commission as possible, then you go to a no frills, this kind of a low commissions. And then, you want, maybe an investor who wants some more service particularly research, so you would go to a broker who had more research even if you have to pay more, you might be interested in mutual funds, the quality of the mutual fund programs at different brokers vary.
Kevin McCormally: So Manuel, what if your interested in low cost, is the commission, the only thing you have to look at, or are there other fees involved here?
Manuel Schiffres: Right, there are fees besides brokerage commissions that you have to concern yourself with. There may be fees for inactivity. There may be fees for maintaining IRAs. Those are the sorts of things where brokers nickel and diamond to debt and they can add up to a lot of money over the course of a year or two.
Kevin McCormally: You mentioned mutual fund programs, if I am a mutual fund investor, would some brokerage be better than other for me to buy the funds through?
Manuel Schiffres: Some brokers make mutual funds a big part of their offerings. They may offer a thousands of No-load funds, and they may offer them at no transaction fee meaning that you won't have any charges to buy the fund, so if you are a mutual fund investor, you need to pay close attention to the nature of the offerings of a brokerage firm and the number of funds that are offered without transaction fees.
Kevin McCormally: Okay, thank you very much.
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