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February 09, 2005

Schwab Lowers Trading Costs

I received an email from Schwab today announcing that they are lowering commission charges for clients with $50,000 to $1,000,000 in assets at Schwab. The accounts do not all have to be managed by Northlake Capital Management to qualify. The new commission schedule for qualifying clients is $12.95 per trade for up to 1000 shares and 1.5 cents per trade above 1,000 shares. Presently, the schedule is $19.95 per trade for up to 1,000 shares and 1.5 cents per share above 1,000 shares....

To receive the lower schedule, clients must be enrolled in Schwab's eConfirm program (confirmations sent via email). Eventually, Schwab will require enrollment in their eStatement program as well (monthly statements sent via email). If you are receiving eConfirms now whenever a trade is completed in your account, you need to do nothing. If you receive, confirmations in the mail, please provide me with an email address and I will prepare the paperwork to enroll you in eConfirms. As soon as I know about eStatements, I will get the information out to you.

As far as I know, there is no change to the $9.95 per trade, regardless of size, for clients with over $1 million in assets. If you have over $1 million in assets at Schwab and have not been paying $9.95, please call or email me so I can link your non-Northlake accounts and get you the preferred rate across all accounts.

Schwab has a competitive commission schedule and is a good partner for Northlake in terms of custody, trading, and portfolio accounting. I appreciate their efforts to maintain low commissions.

Posted by Steve Birenberg at February 9, 2005 03:32 PM in All Positions