I will post a series reviews of online discount brokers that I had experience with. I will start with SogoTrade.
Let's start with some facts about SogoTrade: SogoTrade is a division of Genesis Securities, LLC, which is a member of SIPC and FINRA. SogoTrade acts as a self-clearer for NASDAQ-transacted securities (which explains why the order execution is superb, unlike other online discount brokers.)
Range of Offerrings:
As of August 31,2009, SogoTrade has a full range of investments that you can choose from. They added Options trading in May 2009. You can buy, sell, short and cover stocks. Unlike some others, they do have a long list of stocks that you can short:
http://www.gndt.com/support/shortlist.htm. I guess in this market, we do have a lot of shorts.
With regard to the option trading, however, you can only buy, sell and covered call options, which means that you can NOT do spreads and covered put options.
Streaming Quotes:
When you enter a stock or options order, the quotes are real-time streaming. They do have streaming quotes for all stocks that you want to watch, in a separate tab. It is only Level I, though (You can get Level II in SogoElite, but then you'll have to convert to SogoElite internally for a $10 fee, and pay another $10 monthly fee). I personally use other broker's Level II quotes, so I don't bother paying them the fee (plus SogoElite's commission structure is different, see below).
Order Fills:
Order is filled quickly; I am impressed, so far. I notice that since in SogoTrade you can only trade in regular hours, orders entered outside the normal business hours will have some trouble. I would recommend punching in the order when market is actively trading.
This bring to one of the several disappointments I have with SogoTrade: no pre-market and after-market trading, not even with the hefty fee.
Commissions:
Unless you trade with penny stock, you commission will be $3.00 with .70 per option contract. This is one of the lowest brokers around. Well, I may be a little picky: it is NOT the lowest. Some other brokers charges less, like Just2trade, eoption.com, etc. But they all have other issue (albeit not serious ones) which I will address in other posts.
Website Design and Trading Easiness:
It is a fairly good experience to trade on their website. The quotes you get in every order entering stage is real-time. The website seems to have very few issues.
Account Opening and Customer Service:
Account can be opened in their website within 20 minutes, but you will still need to mail/fax their your signature form and copy of your ID. Funding your account will take some time, as they instituted some lengthy process to link external bank accounts: first you have to wait for two small deposits appearing in your bank's activity, second you have to mail/email/fax them the voided check or bank statement. I will recommend to call them immediately after you email/fax them the voided check, otherwise it could take a good several days.
Now, let's address the customer service, and this is the major areas of my compliant: obviously they have expanded quite a bit because of extensive marketing and low commissions. They haven't expanded in a same scale for customer service. As of August 31, 2009, the live chat function is dead. You need to either call them or communicate through secure message center. Calling them is usually a painful 15 minute waiting or even longer. Secure message does get answered in 24 hours, but if you have follow-up questions you will need to send them another message again and wait for another 24 hours. The flip side is that you probably won't need to constantly talk with their customer service, since I personally haven't call them once everything is set up. However, do keep in mind that this could be a pain.
Promotions:
SogoTrade is currently offering several promotions: 100 free trades or refund of ACAT transfer charge. 100 free trades seem to be automatic, only after you have funded your account. It is good for 30 days so use as many as you can. The refund of ACAT transfer from other broker do need some proof like statement. You will need to send them the statement once you receive it from other broker.
If you like my comments about SogoTrade and decide to open an account, you can put referral code (390389) in the "promotional/referral code" field. It won't cost you anything, but it does help me making further comments about SogoTrade.
Thanks.
