Some Financial Freebies & Deals

Since we're going into the weekend, just thought I'd post up various freebies and deals I've come across over the past week or two that are finance/market related. Economy sucks right now, so some of these should be beneficial.

• Free Quicken Online - yep, entirely free. (They used to charge $35/yr). Worth checking out for all you savvy personal finance people out there. I wrote about this deal a week or two ago and just wanted to make sure everyone took advantage of it, I know I did.
  
• Free Stock Trades - If you want 10 free trades a month, even for retirement accounts, then check out Zecco. Its great for building core positions over the long-term. If you think about it, 10 trades a month at other brokers would normally cost you $40-70 per month in commissions, so you just saved that money. They recently had no commissions for the entire month of October, which I wrote about here.
  
• Get $100 bonus at ForexClub. Those of you who trade forex or are interested in getting into it, this is a pretty good deal. Just deposit $100 or more into a FXClub account and they give you $100; easy stuff.

Lastly, a few readers have been emailing me wondering what I've been doing with short-term cash in this environment. The crazy market volatility means I've reduced position sizes in the market and have much more cash on hand than I normally would. I've just parked some of that cash safely into FDIC insured online savings accounts. The yields aren't what they used to be (thank you Ben Bernanke), but you can still get some decent rates to park your cash safely in this environment and earn some interest. I've got accounts at both of these places:

• Earn 2.75% APY with ING Direct Online Savings Account. These guys have been around the online savings game for a long time. I've had an account with them forever it seems. Easy interface, no fees, no minimums, and FDIC insurance at ING Direct.
• 3.00% APY with HSBC Direct Online Savings. This is the other online savings account I've got. Slightly higher rate, but I personally like ING's setup a little bit better. The interest difference between the two doesn't add up to a whole lot anyways. But, HSBC Direct is definitely worth a look as they have no fees, no minimums, and FDIC insurance as well.
  

Zecco.com Offers Free Trades All of October!

Well, looks like Zecco.com continues to expand their reputation as the brokerage that offers free trades. Their latest promotion is free trades (both equity and options) for the entire month of October. Yep, that's right. Trade all you want for free in any account type. I'm a long time user of Zecco, and have to say I'm quite impressed with this. Traders can save a bunch of money on commissions with this promotion.

Here's the message from the CEO regarding the promotion,

"To show our appreciation for your loyalty, we have decided to make October a 100% unlimited free trading month. This means that between October 1st and October 31st you can make unlimited equity and options trades commission-free. As far as I know, this has never been done in the history of the brokerage industry, until now. But then again, we are seeing things in the market we never would have believed, until now."

And yes, for those of you without an account, this applies to new accounts as well. Taken from their FAQ,

"If I open a new account, can it get free trades too?

Yes, once your new account is funded, it will receive unlimited stock and options no-commission trades in the month of October."

So, sign up for an account now to get free trades. And, to those of you wondering what happens after the October promotion is over? Well, you still get 10 free trades a month thereafter, as long as you've got $2500 in your account. And, after you've used up your 10 free trades, its only $4.50 per trade after that, which is easily still one of the cheapest rates in the business. Zecco is really pushing hard to be the lowest-cost brokerage in the industry. It's tough to beat 10 free trades per month, not to mention free trades (equity and options) for ALL of October. I'm impressed.

Go get yourself 100% free trades for all of October, and then 10 free trades a month thereafter!

Full Disclosure: Zecco.com is an advertiser on this site, but they did not pay for this post. I am already a Zecco user and am making this post voluntarily to let readers know of this damn good deal.