eTrade vs optionsXpress

[salilsurendran]

Hello,
I had eTrade but opened an account with optionsXpress because they were cheaper when making mutual fund trades. However, I find that optionsXpress don't have as many mutual funds to trade as eTrade and also it is very difficult to search in their database as to if that mutual fund is available for trading. So many times I research and find some funds but those funds are not available in optionsXpress. Anyone find the same?

[Tabs]

The short time that I dabbled with OptionXpress, it was largely for... options. And in that capacity, I thought it worked fairly well. I appreciated its fairly minimal design so that I can minimize what I didn't need or understand, and focus on what I wanted to look at.

Standard stock buys and sells were also quite easily done on it.

I've never tried to buy or sell mutual funds on there though.... As a specialty platform, with such a minimal design and feature set, I would not have tried to do so myself. For that, I really do think one should look elsewhere.

[moneysma]

You might want to look into Schwab for mutual funds. I use them and have no issues. I invest in many of the Schwab funds which have treated me well. No fees for buying or selling, $100 min initial investment and $1 for additional investments.

Most of the 3rd party funds they offer are no-fee too. The minimums are $1,000 to start and $500 to keep going. Of course the Vanguard funds do have a fee to buy.