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ShareBuilder.com is a famous online stock brokerage firm founded in 1996 and now it’s an ING company (purchased by ING in November 2007). ShareBuilder built its name by having low commissions and easy-to-use online interface. ShareBuilder also provides service for recurring, and automatic purchases of shares of stock and ETFs.

I received a postcard from ShareBuilder which offers $50 sign up bonus plus cheap commission opportunities. I’d like to share the promotion with you. I personally think it’s a time to buy in some potential stocks and wait for growth. The $50 bonus is very easy to get—Open your account using the promotion code INVEST50, make a trade before 12/31/08, and $50 will be deposited in your account in 4 to 6 weeks. Details can be found at www.sharebuilder.com/invest50.

The account at sharebuilder.com features no account minimum balance requirement and no inactivity fees. You can choose from more than 7,000 stocks and ETFs. You can even schedule your investments on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis.

Another feature of ShareBuilder that is worth mentioning is the ability to buy fractional shares. I believe this is the only one brokerage company that allows you to buy fractional shares. No other brokerage allows you to buy fractional shares of stock. This feature helps you to invest your money on a regular basis. For example, you can invest $100 weekly to buy Citi stocks regardless of the real prices of Citi stocks.

However, I’d like to mention that the $4 per trade is only available on every Tuesday. You can schedule to buy a stock on Tuesday for $4 per trade. But on other days, the price is pretty high compared to other brokerages. So the ability to schedule a trade is really great.

Another feature is periodic promotion from ShareBuilder.com. ShareBuilder always offer sign up bonuses or other kinds of promotions to its new or current customers which makes your experience of ShareBuilder.com much better.

Of course, there are other great brokerages you can consider before you open up an account online like E*Trade, Zecco, TradeKing, and TD Ameritrade etc.

Following are two articles for your reference: SmartMoney’s Annual Broker Survey and Best of the Online Brokers-Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

I have introduced a lot of sign-up opportunities from banks and credit card issuers. Actually, most brokeage companies also offer sign-up bonuses for using their service. I have a post about the sign-up bonus from ShareBuilder last year which included a lot of promotion codes for opening an account at ShareBuilder.com and get varies amount of bonuses.

However, ShareBuilder was acquired by ING Direct on November 19, 2007 for $220 million. Since then we seldom hear the sign-up bonus from ShareBuilder. Today, I found out a new promotion code from ShareBuilder-Gift50. With this new promotion code, you can get $50 bonus for opening a new account at ShareBuilder after you purchase a first stock through ShareBuilder. This is a decent deal if you want to buy stocks online. In order to get the deal, you have to click “I’m responding to a promotion” button and then enter the promotion code “Gift50“. Otherwise, you can’t get the promotion offer.

In the “Account Type” part, you can choose “Individual Account” (You can open an account for your spouse later with another $50 bonus, so don’t open joint account.). The account at ShareBuilder features:

• No account minimums
• No inactivity fees
• Invest in stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs
• Free automatic investment plan
• Investment guidance
• Gain and loss tracking

ShareBuilder is one of the most popular US brokerage with about 1 million accounts. Sharebuilder offers an easy, convenient way to begin investing, and is relatively inexpensive, but it is not free. And nearly 70% of its customers have less than 3 years of investing experience. ShareBuilder offer a variety of programs to choose from based on your own investment styles. It was rated as the Forbes Best of the Web.

For those who want to learn to invest on stock, ETF or other investments, you can try to start from ShareBuilder. In brief, Sharebuilder is an online discount brokerage that encourages automatic scheduled purchases of stocks and exchange-traded funds and extremely good for beginners.