4 More Ways to Buy Stocks Without Paying a Commission

For investors and traders, every little bit of savings can help.  If you can save on commissions, it can certainly help your bottom line. This year, I've incurred $4,000 in commissions, and some of my trader friends have paid out many times that amount during the last eleven months.

A couple months ago, I featured an article called How to Buy Stocks Without Paying a Commission: 10 Different Ways. So I've decided to follow up with a few more ideas.

1. Free Commission Offers for a Period of Time

Some online stock brokerage firms offer free trading for a certain period. For example, if you fund a new account with OptionsHouse, you can trade free for 60 days.

Also, you can trade commission free for 30 days at tradeMONSTER.

2. Commission Free on Certain Types of Investments

An example is Firstrade, which allows commission free trading on ten types of ETFs.

3. Free Commission Offers for a Certain Number of Trades

 In addition to the time frame offer, you have an alternative offer of 100 commission-free trades when you open and fund an account at OptionsHouse.

4. Absolutely and Totally Commission Free Investing

There is a relatively new online broker called Loyal3, which charges no fees or commissions, whatsoever. The minimum investment? Only $10, unless it's for an IPO (which they do participate in), then the minimum account balance is $350.  How does the company make this offer? They use the affinity factor and according to the company's website, they provide services to the companies for which they offer transactions in, in return the companies cover the commissions and expenses.

This is primarily designed for the small investor who invests for the long term. The issues to be aware of are the maximum investments, limited to $2500 a month per stock, and the fact that trades are only placed once a day on a batched order process basis. In addition, they only currently handle transactions 53 stocks.