As you might gather from reading this blog, I’ve been doing lots of research into options and options trading strategies. I’ve just recently decided that it was time to position myself for the next step: putting what I’ve learned into use on more of my family’s investments. A large chunk of our portfolio is in Fidelity IRAs, so for me, this meant completing the paperwork to move over to one of them to a ThinkOrSwim IRA.

[Read more →]

I’ve recently finished a year-long stint on my employer’s “401k Committee”. We’d been searching for a new 401k plan provider in order to lower fees paid by both the company and individuals, as well as increase participants investing options. One thing we quickly learned was that many 401k providers are now offering plans that allow participants to opt out of the administrated, standard mutual-fund plan and fully control their assets using a “self-directed brokerage” option. This, in effect, gives you IRA-like control over your investments while still staying within the plan.

[Read more →]

TradeKing, the brokerage we use for the trades written about on this blog, is willing to give $50.00 to those opening new accounts through their referral program. While the referral program has historically given $50 to those who did the referring, between now and August 27, 2009 they’ll also give the new account holder (that’s you) $50 too!

[Read more →]

My last posts about picking a brokerage talked about how my wife and I had decided to go with ShareBuilder on a temporary basis, but were now looking to switch to somewhere else. I know it has taken many more months then we first envisioned back then, but in the last week we’ve gotten off our fat asses and started to transfer our GI portfolio to TradeKing.

[Read more →]

I’ve had a brief e-mail conversation with the customer support team over at TradeKing. I can now confirm that they do not offer any API access for data downloads or trading instruction uploads.

[Read more →]