Zecco

[Frank0051]

Fidelity has over $1.5 trillion AUM.
TD Ameritrade has about $0.5 trillion in AUM.
E-Trade has total assets of $50 billion or so. Scotttrade is in a similar position.


Interactive Brokers has something like like $25 billion under management. But, most of its assets are outside of the US and they do global trading, so they do have an incentive to self-clear (if they do). They are probably the smallest of the bunch, but they do self-clearing by basically passing along all the costs to the customer - just like they would if Penson was their clearing house.

Now, compare that to Zecco, which has maybe $500 million in assets and TradeKing which has $1.2 billion. The economies of scale aren't there. And, even if they were to reach the size of Interactive Brokers and do the stupid thing and self clear, their fees would shoot up and small account holders would flee. Just look at Interactive Brokers price sheet: 0.005 a share with a min. of $1 and a max of .05. So it can still get pricey, and those doesn't include the ECN fees, which they don't pay for you - so it gets even more expensive. And, they require $10,000.00 min. deposit. I bet there are some other hidden fees in there, but their website sucks.