TD Ameritrade – AMTD

My online stock broker, TD Ameritrade (formerly Ameritrade – now TD Ameritrade, since the merger between Ameritrade and TD Waterhouse) has just put their newly redesigned website online last Friday. This is the first big change and big news we have seen from TD Ameritrade recently.

US Mint Gold Coins Big News from TD Ameritrade TD Ameritrade announced on Monday lower trading commissions! This is great for traders and investors alike. We can now save a little bit of money on each trade. TD Ameritrade’s new commission fee per trade is $9.99, lowered from $10.99. I am one happy trader! TD Ameritrade clients now save 9.10% on commissions fees – the difference between 9.99 and 10.99 being 9.10%. A $1 drop in commissions may not seem like much to the average trader, but for those placing a lot of trades, the $1 in savings adds up quickly.

TD Ameritrade: Strong Earnings TD Ameritrade also announced earnings on Monday. Second quarter earnings were $172.8 million, or 30 cents per share. Last year’s second quarter earnings were $77.4 million, or 19 cents per share. TD Ameritrades earnings have doubled from last year’s second quarter.

TD Ameritrade Stock Down 9% on Monday The earnings doubled, but the stock price fell over 9%. Why? With the 9% decrease in commissions fees, TD Ameritrade announced a weaker forecast for the coming year, due to less commissions income. My personal opinion is that traders and investors will be more willing to place more trades with lower commissions. We’ll have to wait and see how my opinion plays out during the rest of the year.

TD Ameritrade New Advertisement Blitz I’ve seen new ads for TD Ameritrade on CNBC and on various stock market websites, such as Yahoo! Finance. Once ad on Yahoo! I saw stated “TD Ameritrade – up to 50 free trades + $100 cash”. Earlier on Monday I also saw a similar ad, except it stated “+$500 cash”. I’m sure there are stipulations for receiving $100 or $500 cash, such as a minimum initial investment of $25,000 or perhaps a larger investment. I haven’t read their fine print on the free cash, but I know they’ve been giving free trades to all new TD Ameritrade members, which is still nice.

I’d like to hear your opinions on TD Ameritrade in general, and more specifically their new website, earnings, and advertisement campaign.

7 thoughts on “TD Ameritrade – AMTD”

  1. I just thought you might want to know this:

    Company officials expect the new offerings to improve Ameritrade’s profits, but that hasn’t been figured into their latest earnings predictions for the year. Officials increased their earnings prediction for 2006 by 3 cents a share; they now expect earnings per share to be between 85 cents and $1.03.

    Howard Chen, an analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, said in a research note that the company’s earnings predictions may prove too conservative.

    Chen noted that Ameritrade’s predictions did not account for any organic growth in client assets or any additional interest rate hikes. And the prediction doesn’t include any additional cost savings beyond the $378 million the company predicted it would save by consolidating operations with TD Waterhouse.

    “We believe there is potential upside to all,” Chen said.

    Moglia defended the company’s projections because Ameritrade’s practice has been to factor in all the costs of new initiatives right away, but the company doesn’t factor the benefits of new initiatives until they are realized.

    I gleaned this off of an article from Yahoo Finance

    It is one of the factors for my investment in TD Ameritrade after the crazy gap down which I think is an overreaction.

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  3. I like ameritrade. Like all things the new commisions are not free. Ameritrade raised the fee’s for investing in mutual funds with a transaction fee up to a silly $49.95 per transaction. The charge for telephone brokerage also went up.

    Ameritrade’s iZone service with $5 trades (which I’ve blogged about) is still the best deal IMHO.

  4. For last few days I am having trouble to log on TD Ameritrade.com web page to check my account. Could you Please help. Perhaps thier system is down???????????????????
    Ahmad Sigari

  5. Hi Ahmad,

    I just logged in to http://www.tdameritrade.com‘s website and everything was working fine. It seemed a little sluggish, but everything worked.

    Maybe it’s a problem with your ISP or an internet link between your location and TD Ameritrade’s servers.

    I would recommend contacting them:

    TD AMERITRADE and Former Ameritrade accounts: 800-669-3900

    Former TD Waterhouse accounts: 800-934-4448

    Let us know if you still have problems logging in.

    Best Regards,
    Nick

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