Investor Brain

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Plagiarized!

Every January, I send a huge survey out to the online brokers who will be reviewed for that year’s Barron’s Online Broker Review.  This year, I sent an enormous Excel spreadsheet out to about two dozen brokers on January 20. 

A little more than a week ago, a different publication sent out their survey, which will be published in their June issue.  From what other brokers have told me, in past years, this particular reporter has used a Word document that the respondents fill in. But this year, he switched it up and is using Excel.  That’s not a problem, but what he did when switching to Excel borders on unethical, and possibly illegal.

This other publication’s survey is quite a bit shorter than mine, but more than half of the questions asked are lifted directly from my survey.  By “directly” I mean, “copied word for word.”

I think that if some other writer is using my survey as a base document that the LEAST he could do is re-word the questions he’s stealing from me.  I do not think it’s a strange coincidence that we both ask this exact question:

“Average # STOCK Retail Trades per Day, quarter ending 12/31/2009”

His survey includes my caps, and the same time frame.  Even more damning, further down his survey contains this question, which is an exact copy of a question that I’ve been asking for a few years now:

“Is a real-time quote available before the trade is placed?  Does the quote appear when a ticker symbol is entered in the trading screen, or does the customer have to enter it elsewhere on the site?”

His survey also copies, word for word, a series of questions I ask about SIPC coverage and limits.  His survey has a lot of questions I don’t ask, mostly about mutual funds and managed accounts, but those are details that Barron’s readers have not asked me to consider in my 15 years of writing this story.  But there is just one section of his survey that has original questions—all the rest are either directly copied from mine, or only lightly edited. 

A lawyer friend tells me that there are copyright issues involved here, and I’m trying to decide what to do next.  This week I’m finishing up the 15th Annual Review of Online Brokers for Barron’s, which will be in print in the March 15 issue, so I don’t have a lot of free time. 

I’ve found many of my articles reproduced without permission here and there on the web; usually a request to the webmaster to take down the article does the trick.  But this time a source document of mine that has never been published in public is being used.  Maybe the other writer thought I wouldn’t find out about it?  I just cannot imagine a universe where someone would think this is OK. 

OK ... back to work! 

Lack of Options in Tax Software

I WAS GOING TO WRITE A COLUMN ABOUT packaged tax software and how well the top programs generally work for retail investors and traders. But I just couldn’t get beyond a nagging question for Intuit, H&R Block, TaxACT, and anyone else who publishes these very useful applications: When will you discover that individual investors are trading options, and reflect that fact in your tax programs?

The Options Clearing Corp. reports average daily volume of 14.4 million contracts in 2009. And already in 2010, the average is up to 16.4 million. Quite a few of those transactions take place in retail brokerage accounts, and will have to be accounted for on someone’s Schedule D. But packaged software isn’t addressing this market at all.

For example, users of Intuit’s 2009 TurboTax Premier, while trying to input their transactions, will not find “options” as a menu choice. Options transactions fall into the “Other” category, which means more mouse clicks are needed to get the information entered. Options are considered securities by the IRS, so gains are subject to the same kinds of treatment as gains on stock transactions. The problem most programs have with processing options transactions is dealing with their symbols, and matching up the entry to the correct exit from the trade.

As a couple of online brokers pointed out to me, the IRS does not yet require them to report options transactions. Your 1099 from your broker includes your total proceeds from sales of stocks, mutual funds, and bonds. That left it up to the individual to report options transactions. It’s difficult to measure the “tax gap” that likely resulted from not reporting gains on options transactions over the years.

That all changes in the next couple of years. Once brokers are required to report options transactions to their clients and to the IRS, I’m hoping that tax software helps traders make these calculations. Got that, publishers?

SmartStops nearly two years ago debuted a service that recommends exit strategies for stocks ("A New Way to Tell When to Fold ‘Em,” July 7, 2008). It’s just added Reentry Alerts to tell you when it might be safe to get back in.

SMARTSTOPS (http://www.smartstops.net) uses proprietary algorithms that categorize the overall market into up, down, or sideways movements in order to help calculate the best exit points for individual stocks. The service costs $9.95 per month for 10 stocks, and up to $99.95 for 100 stocks, with a 20% discount for an annual subscription.

For an additional $5 per month for every 10 stocks covered, Reentry Alerts signal when the risk profile of the equity you’re following has returned to normal. An e-mail alert will be sent to you to let you know you should take another look at this stock, and possibly buy it back or take off any protective hedge you had put in place. The service doesn’t tell you what stocks you should trade; you have to enter the list of stocks to follow manually.

IN PUTTING TOGETHER this year’s edition of Barron’s Best Online Brokers we’ve come across a number of interesting tidbits that we can share with you before the rankings are released in mid-March.

MURIEL SIEBERT AND CO. (http://www.siebertnet.com) has introduced a program to help clients with large positions in difficult-to-locate shares earn a little loan income from them. Positions must be more than 50,000 shares or valued above $100,000, and they must be fully paid for or exceed any margin debit in the account. Clients who decide to lend these securities to Siebert’s clearing firm can receive the income based on market value and supply/demand conditions. In addition, Siebert customers can now use add-on Trusteer Rapport Desktop Security Software to protect themselves from any phishing or spoofing attacks they might receive from Websites they visit.

ZECCO (http://www.zecco.com), which has made a push to improve customer service, has boosted staffing levels by 20% and extended help operations by 18½ hours per week. Over 95% of Zecco’s reps now hold a Series 7 license, a major gain from previous years. Zecco also added live chat in early 2009; CEO Michael Raneri says it’s popular with customers and helpful in reducing response times.

MB TRADING (http://www.mbtrading.com) acquired former partner WizeTrade, a Dallas-based community for traders that has been rebranded MBT World. In addition, its next generation product offering, now called MBT Lightwave, allows traders to create a variety of strategies, back-testing and then sharing them with the community of traders and MBT customers. The firm’s entire suite of software applications received at least one major update during 2009, including an advanced options platform. MB Trading reduced commissions for options, foreign exchange and futures.

TRADESTATION (http://www.tradestation.com) just launched TradeStation Strategy Network, a searchable online marketplace of ready-to-trade strategies assembled by independent third-party developers. TradeStation clients can sort, rank and compare trading strategy products by asset class, risk level, frequency of trading, historical return percentages and other criteria. After identifying an appropriate strategy, clients can subscribe, download it to their TradeStation platform and start using it in simulated or live trading.

TRADEKING (http://www.tradeking.com) expanded its Webinar and All-Star blogger programs while expanding its Online Learning Center. The second edition of The Options Playbook, written by TradeKing’s “Options Guy” Brian Overby, is an entertaining and effective guide to options trading. The firm has also tested a new Trading Dashboard, which integrates a client’s trading activities with the site’s social-media functionality, and rolled it out to the entire client base in January 2010.

OPTIONSHOUSE (http://www.optionshouse.com) updated its research tools last year with the addition of Exchange-Traded Funds-centric research, technical analysis and back testing of strategies. In addition, the firm partnered with a third-party performance monitoring service in order to actively measure execution statistics. OptionsHouse also added a mobile application that runs on a broad range of devices, including the iPhone and BlackBerry, with real-time access to accounts and trading.

Published in Barron’s, March 1, 2010. 

Saturday, February 20, 2010

One Client, One Quote

WHEN CHARLES SCHWAB IN LATE JANUARY WENT to a single, lower fee for online stock trading, we figured other changes were on the way. We were right. Fidelity ended its tiered pricing structure a few days later, and E*Trade followed suit just a few days after that.

As we discussed on Barrons.com Jan. 28 ("Has A New Price War Broken Out in Online Trading?” ), Schwab’s (http://www.schwab.com) peers and competitors interpreted the pricing change as a positive, putting the fees more in line with the rest of the world (at $8.95, the commission is in the middle of the industry pack), rather than setting off a quick race to the bottom. The big shift is that different prices for different customers appear to be coming to an end, and for that, hallelujah.

James Burton, president of Fidelity’s (http://www.fidelity.com) retail brokerage, admits his firm’s price change, which drops all stock trades to $7.95 per transaction, was a response to Schwab (ticker: SCHW): “It’s a competitive business. We listen to our customers’ feedback and do what it takes to stay highly competitive.”

One twist from Fidelity is that customers can trade 25 iShares exchange-traded funds free. This suite of 25 BlackRock ETFs, according to Burton, covers the key U.S. asset classes: large-, mid- and small-cap, with a mix of growth, value and blend funds. There are also international and bond ETFs available. “Investors who want to use passive index products to supplement or form the core of a portfolio can now do that at no cost,” says Burton.

BlackRock’s iShares S&P 500 ETF (IVV) already has an extremely low expense ratio of nine basis points (0.09%), according to Burton. If you held $1,000 worth of IVV, that would cost you 90 cents a year in administrative and other fees, compared with the 0.5% to 3% most mutual funds charge. And then you don’t have to worry about other transaction costs, bringing the relative cost of owning or trading ETFs way down. “We’ve removed that incremental cost,” says Burton.

E*Trade (http://www.etrade.com) didn’t toss the tiered structure entirely, but eliminated the top tier of $12.99 per trade for less-active customers. Now the top commission is $9.99 per trade; active traders with more than 150 trades per quarter will pay $7.99. In addition, the firm will stop charging a quarterly account-service fee of $40 in the second quarter of 2010. E*Trade (ETFC) is also dropping a per-share charge for trades of more than 2,000 shares.

Years ago TD Ameritrade made a big splash when it announced that all stock trades would carry a $9.99 commission. It was a big deal because the broker wasn’t playing the tiered-pricing game. With E*Trade hanging on to its tiered pricing structure—albeit a reduced one—the industry can’t quite say a final good-bye to this idea. Which is too bad.

LIGHTSPEED LAUNCHES WEB TRADER Lightspeed (http://www.lightspeed.com), which has focused on active retail traders as well as proprietary trading groups, hedge funds and algorithmic “black box” firms, noted with interest that about 30% of its new clients in 2009 came from traditional online brokers. Some of these new customers, the online broker says, previously were intimidated by Lightspeed’s extremely customizable software-based trading application. Now the firm hopes to make it even easier for them to join up.

Stephen Ehrlich, Lightspeed’s CEO, says most of the new customers “graduate” to Lightspeed’s platform, but many have asked for a Web-based application. “They’re just about ready to make that jump, but to get ready they want to use the Web-based platform, use the demo of the software platform and then make the move,” he notes. “Our Web Trader will remove that intimidation and help the customer coming from a traditional broker make the switch,” says Ehrlich.

The Web Trader went live on Feb. 2. Customers can trade stocks and options on the Web Trader but must use the Lightspeed software application to trade futures. Lightspeed charges 0.395 cents per share for stock trades, and 50 cents per contract for options transactions, with no minimum.

One drawback I see is that customers must choose one platform or the other, and can use only one at a time. So once you begin using the software platform, you can’t go back and use the Web application. Ehrlich notes the Web platform is version 1.0 and Lightspeed will continue to work on it, making it more powerful. I hope it will be interchangeable with the software platform in time as well.

SCOTTRADE’S FOREIGN FORAY

Customers of Scottrade (http://www.scottrade.com) can now place orders online for approximately 3,700 international securities, including many Canadian stocks. The securities include American depositary receipts along with U.S.-traded foreign stocks from approximately 20 countries on six continents.

In addition, Scottrade added an International Investing filter to its stock screener, which can be found in the Quotes & Research section of the site. The online Knowledge Center now includes research materials about ADRs. The section includes information about different types of foreign securities at Scottrade, how to trade them and how to read the symbols.

Commissions are $7 per transaction for stocks priced over $1 a share. All transactions are completed in U.S. dollars, including dividend distributions.

IS THAT STOCK FAIRLY PRICED?

Market Topographer (http://www.markettopographer.com), launched in mid-January, attempts to provide the answer. The site combines fundamental and behavioral analysis, focusing on a company’s relative risk profile, its trading multiple, and whether expectations embedded in its share price are achievable.

Free during an evaluation period, the platform is driven by a financial model with 20 years of data, analyzing 12 core risk-assessment characteristics. The suite of tools is designed to be agnostic and avoids buy and sell signals. You’ll find comparisons between two stocks, with the price broken down into a variety of components, such as expected earnings growth and dividends paid.

Check out the free trial, because it appears to me that this will be an expensive site once the publisher starts charging.

Published in Barron’s 2/15/2010