Gambling with market timing

There's definitely a thrill when cherry picking stocks near their lows and watching them climb back out of their holes. I got lucky on a number of stocks recently like CSE, NTGR, AMD, PAR, CCRT, AAPL.

Still, I definitely have some losers this year as well, such as VDSI, DBTK, OMTR, OXPS. These are Motley Fool stock picks, so I'm willing to hold at least another 12-18 months for signs that the companies will be able to turn around. I've continued to buy down on these so my price point is lower than what you see above, but have reached my limit and will not buy anymore.

Looks like May could be another downer month, so I'm adding cash into my Zecco account for more bottom fishing. StockTradingToGo and askStockGuru are recent technical analysis sites I've been reading. You'll be able to track my trades at ZeccoShare, Cake Financial, and Icarra.

Icarra.com down: Wednesday April 16 2008

Could not connect
Count not connect to db

These are the words I see when trying to connect to icarra.com, the portfolio/performance tracking site I recently moved over to. I had originally used Cake Financial but it didn't properly track my basis positions when I transferred stock between brokerages. I don't think there's any easy method to track brokerage transfers, so I've done it manually through Icarra.com.

Apparently Icarra.com has had outages before, just like Zecco.com. I guess I get what I pay for (nothing but my time).

Zecco web site unavailable: 11am EST Monday

Right in the middle of trading day. Zecco.com isn't for the avid trader, folks. I doubt this is for a "scheduled upgrade" as they say it is. Why didn't they do this on Sunday when the markets were closed?

I initiated a funds transfer from my checking account at 8:00am EST this morning, and a check on some the market today looks like there are some good bargains. So I go to Zecco.com and it's down. How unfortunate. I'm sure I'll see other days for good bargains over the course of 2008.

Zecco review March 2008

Zecco.com is having sporadic issues today. I intermittently get Service Unavailable errors. I did put in a couple orders, which you can follow on my Cake Financial portfolio.

I recently rolled over my Scottrade account to Zecco. My Sharebuilder account is in progress, as I didn't have the required $50 in cash to process the account transfer fee. Scottrade didn't charge me anything to transfer to Zecco. It's a little dumb, since Sharebuilder sells off all partial shares before transferring, and now my cash balance is almost $200, which would have covered the account transfer fee.

The main reason I was drawn to Zecco is of course the $0 commissions for up to 10 stock trades a month. After that, it's $4.50/trade which is still a damn good deal. However, their website has a lot to be desired. Their ACH checking account transfer page is lame -- doesn't match their site aesthetics at all. This probably has to do with their interface to Penson Financial -- the securities firm behind Zecco.

In this volatile market, Zecco allows me to buy "nibble" positions -- small trades at $100 or $200 at a time, without having to worry about the commission cost, which would definitely add up over time.

For an ACH transfer from my checking account, $5,000 got posted to Zecco within 2 business days. For an ACH transfer of $10,000 and above however, I have to wait 5-7 business days.

Zecco does allow dividend reinvestment, but you must submit the request in writing to their customer service explicitly stating which ticket symbol you wish to reinvest. Zecco does not do partial shares, so you'll have a cash remainder after.

For each trade I've made, however, Penson Financial sends me paper mail of the transaction. I'm not sure how to turn that off. I'll be contacting customer service. Customer service normally takes around 2 days to respond to e-mail. When I called them, the wait time was around 10 minutes.

For the stocks that transferred from Scottrade, Zecco shows them as having a $0 basis, which of course is wrong. I didn't really expect that to transfer, but somehow Cake Financial downloaded the transactions from Zecco and still maintained the original basis. Neat.

I still use my Scottrade account for the Realtime ticker applet, as Zecco charges a fee for that functionality. I would recommend Zecco to any buy-and-hold investor who wants to slowly get into stocks. While Sharebuilder offers the same "nibble" methodology, Zecco is completely free for 10 trades/month if your account is worth $2500 or more.