Tycoons Row

As I prepare for this online competition, I’ve been coming across some of these online stock trading platforms.  One in particular that has been showing up lately, which is fairly recent new comer as well is Zecco.  Zecco is featured as a free trading community which is the greatest selling point of this service.  I consider Zecco as a discount online brokerage compared to the large brokerage houses, (ie: Bank of America).  The large brokerages, albeit are very successful due to first mover advantage & brand recognition, but the goal for a discount brokerage is to reduce commissions to zero.  Then how would they make money?

Many discount brokerages give you a limit on how many trades you can do, for example, Zecco allows you to do 10 trades per day & 40 per month free.  I think for a Day Trader, an account like this wouldn’t work as day traders could potentially make 30 - 40 trades in one day.  A service for discount brokerages would be advisory services.  Everyday, people seek to “learn” how to trade and gain insights and analysis.  Advisory services, such as advice, learning plans, one-on-one training are just a few ways that discount brokerages can generate revenue.
Zecco currently has about 20,000 members in its forum.  This is what makes Zecco valueable, a true trading community where like minded invididuals come together.  My only question is have they all been sucessful trading using Zecco and through the meeting of the minds.

What’s cool is that it tracks related blog posts on investing topics. The platform has definitely improved, since last being reviewed on TechCrunch.  The issue back in 2006 was that Zecco didn’t have a “killer active trading platform.”  Today, I think they have improved & grown drastically.  The markets dashboard allows you to see daily activity and trading volumes, winners & losers for the day, there’s also a minute-by-minute news center which is another add bell & whistle.  These are just a few of the additional features besides the typical watchlists, charts & graphs.  As I embark on my quest I will definitely tap into the wisdom of the crowds at Zecco as I compete in the challenge.