What's up with Wachovia Sec?

Have you looked at their web page? They have $19.95 commissions and a pretty broad array of NTF no-load funds. Not great, but it may be adequate.

You have two separate issues here - don't get them confused.

1) the investments themselves - just because you may be moving the account (or it may be being moved for you) doesn't mean that you can't keep the investments themselves (with very few exceptions - ie. if the current brokerage has some proprietary product that they can't send over). 2) rebalancing and retstructuring her portfolio - which you whould review and decide about regardless of where the account ends up.

I've got no experience with Wells' Investments subsidiary, but at a glance, I'd probably not bother with it - there are others which have much broader collections of no-load, no-transaction-fee funds available, and lower commissions for those time when one might want to buy an individual stock or ETF.

I've been mostly very happy with Fidelity and E*Trade, both of which are less expensive and have many more NTF funds available (though lately I've been shifting some parts of the portfolios into ETFs). FWIW.

Your mother may prefer to have a place where she can physically visit and talk to someone. It doesn't actually mean much, but a lot of people find that reassuring. Do not discount the value of that reassurance. She's the one who has to live with this.

I use Wells Fargo as my primary brokerage. A lot depends on what you want or need from a brokerage. I went with them because of their "PMA deal". If you open a PMA checking account in in conjunction with the brokerage accounts, you get 100 transactions per year, per account. That includes equity trades and mutual funds. If you have more than $25K in qualifying assets (includes 10% of mortgage if it's with them) all account fees are waived except transfer out I believe.

Brian

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Trivia: Wells Fargo created the first index mutual fund, in a division that was later sold to Barclay's and became BGI.

Last I heard Wells had various tie-ins between banking and brokerage, such as better mortgage rates if you have a brokerage account, free trades in brokerage if you meet some other requirement, etc. Wells is big on "multiple relationships with every customer" - I think they shoot for five or something like that. It's worth investigating what benefits they're currently offering...a broker is basically a parking lot and if you get a free car wash for the same price and level of convenience...

-Tad

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For anyone with a moderate portfolio, that is >$25K combined in all accounts, the deal is a lot better than that basic one.

Brian

Good point! Makes good sense: it's just a change of registry. I had never thought about it.

Actually, I am the one who manages the assets for her (POA). She prefers it that way. And yes, I prefer a brick-and-mortar place and a real person (broker) that I can get to know and work with.

But I like online services so that I can do my homework: compare available products as well as account balances; and I like to be able to make simple trades (rarely) online, although I usually let the broker do it (at rebalancing time), as long as there is no extra fee.

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Wells Fargo has two different brokerage services. The one that everyone seems to be writing about is WellsTrade. This is the DIY brokerage, with no physical presence.

Wells Fargo also offers a full service account, with brokers in various bank branches that you can talk to. (These brokers refuse to talk to WellsTrade customers - I checked.) To make matters more complicated,Wells Fargo has variants of its full service account - one that charges a wrap fee rather than a la carte commissions, and one that is more like Fidelity's Porfolio Advisory Services. Here's the full list: Wachovia Securities (or at least the portion I've had experience with) is a full service brokerage, so I would expect it to be rolled into WellsFargo's full service division, and not into Wells Trade.

Mark Freeland snipped-for-privacy@nyc.rr.com

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