keen to know this too as i am swaying between belldirect and cmc markets...
Sorry for the slow reply! Gosh I forgot totally about this thread - considering I started it... haha
Ok , so I did end up going with Bell, and my thoughts:
To be honest I kept my westpac online investing account so I use that for live quotes on my watchlist, then shift back to bell to trade orders.I honestly think there's no added difficulty in doing this and rather than paying for live quotes I would just do this. But then again I already had a westpac account. If you didn't I would say $10 a month is pretty insignificant... but that's something you'll have to decide yourself.
TO be honest I don't know what I can say about bell versus CMC. I haven't used CMC butI think i'll open an account to have a look around. With Bell Direct, I honestly can't fault it. I haven't used conditional orders or any of those more sophisticated tools merely as I've never used them before, I'll def look into them soon. As far as normal trading goes it's jsut bread and butter. Login, put your trade in and wollah. It responds and updates near instantly for me given my hotmail gets an email notification almost instantly if I put in a new trade, cancel one , or amend one.
So really for cheaper brokerage I don't see why you wouldn't use it. YOu just put in basic buy/sells and you're paying cheaper.. so I can't see why you'd use $25-30 brokers. Maybe the 'functions' pay for themselves to some. But I think now adays you'll find most of the charting/functionalities everywhere on the world wide web. Although outdated at times, compared to Westpac (when you don't pay for services) Bell gives you access to southern cross research and bell small cap research reports on companies. The 'bell intel' section also provides stock standard things like changes in director's interest, unusual volume etc, and charting tools (which I haven't used but others here seem to not talk highly of it). I didn't notice these sort of research reports in westpac (i was on free however) so it's a big plus.
So yeah if it's buy/sell functionality there is nothing absolutely wrong with Bell. if that's your concern and your paying $20-30 for brokerage then gosh, just go switch already
. Of course the problem is you must only trade with cash in the account. With westpac the T+ 3 debiting from an external bank account meant I sometimes overbought and had less cash than what i'd bought,I'd usually cover it by selling before the time period to settle it (3 days) debited my bank account.
So bell is good in that you can only trade what's in your cash account. IMHO though this is sometimes annoying becuase if you put a buy order in, unlike westpac you cannot have two in. Quite simply if you have $5000 in cash and put a buy order in for $5,000 then essentially you have $0, and you cannot leave another order in and see which of the two you pickup. So with westpac (not sure about other brokers) this was good because you could pick up whichever of the two stocks hit first. With bell i find i'm choosing between a few stocks I want to try and that way i lose out becuase i'm joining the queue at the back of the line shoudl I change my mind and go with another stock.
Keep in mind taht you put money into the cash account, and purchases/sells are done through a trust account so essentially the money is transferring in/out of the cash account to the trust account to settle this. So basically it just results in one confusing statement if you asked me lol. Still whether it's unsettled and in your trust account or cash account, you can still trade with it.
transfers in/out of bell altogether from your bank account to add in funds or draw out tak eabout one business day if you meet today's cut off transfer time.
My only concern left though, as someone said we are a CHESS sponsored holder of shares with Bell, e.g. we own them. So I rest easy if that is true. However, the bank account and the government guarantee still worries me.
Although I do not understand how CMC is different given Bell's cash maangement account is essentially It hink... a westpac account is it not? Someone correct me if I"m wrong. Whereas CMC's is just bankwest?
I am not sure if a difference in legality and fine print means that CMC's essentially still puts you as owner of the bank account and therefore eligible for the bank deposit guarantee. I do know that at the time I joined , Bell's FAQ did mention you were not covered. So yeah.. if anyone has any opinion on this still? I don't want to imagine it *touchwood* but I feel fairly secure that bell wont' go under. That said perhaps I should split into two brokers when I have more money.
Then again that servse as a detriment as sometimes you need more money in one to buy, when it's in the other.
Can anyone comment on CMC's services further? which would be more financially secure - CMC versus Bell? As bell direct isn't covered by bell potter share services (parent) are they?