Online Broker Review: ShareBuilder Stock Trading

Updated Sunday, October 2, 2011

Stock Trading Grade: C

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Overview:

In our original review of ShareBuilder back in 2008, we failed the brokerage as a stock trading platform because limit orders could not be submitted above the most recent quote price. Thankfully, this issue has since been rectified. Remaining drawbacks include the inability to modify open orders and poor usability for closing out existing positions. In April 2011, ShareBuilder launched a redesigned website, which included a redesigned layout for stock order entry. One improvement to the new website is that trade confirmations now show execution time down to the second. In July 2011, ShareBuilder expanded their selection of order types to now include stop loss, stop limit and market on close. With these recent improvements, ShareBuilder is now an adequate stock trading platform.

Order Types:

See our Order Types page for an explanation of order types

Market
Limit
Stop Loss
Stop Limit
Market on Close

Details:

To trade stocks at ShareBuilder, select Trade from the top menu. This will load the Stocks & ETFs trade ticket by default. We submitted an order to buy 10 shares of China Southern Airlines (ZNH) with a limit price of $26.70 and an order expiration of good until canceled (GTC). GTC orders are maintained in the ShareBuilder system for up to 60 days until they are purged. When everything was set we clicked the Review Order button (click on images for larger views):

This loaded the Order Review menu, which provided us with a commission cost for the trade, estimated total order cost and a warning message notifying us that the selected limit price is above the current quote price. Thankfully this message can be ignored as we selected the Place Order button:

The next page notified us that our order was submitted successfully and provided links to place another trade or view the status of our newly submitted order. We clicked on the latter link, which is equivalent to accessing Trade and then Order Status from the top menu:

From the Order Status menu, open orders can be cancelled but they cannot be modified. Once our order executed it immediately populated in the Portfolio menu, which is accessed from Accounts then Portfolio / Positions from the top menu. We decided to close out our positions so we selected Trade and then Sell from this menu:

This loads the trade ticket with the symbol populated and the action set to sell. We would prefer if the number of shares was automatically populated and the order type defaulted to a limit order with the limit price set to the latest quote price. This is functionality that is handled better at other brokerages.