Also slightly OT, but Loyal3 (http://www.loyal3.com) provides fee-free stock trading - both entry and exit. Unfortunately they don't carry TSLA on their platform yet.
Loyal3 works with publicly-traded companies on creating a Customer Stock Ownership Plan or CSOP. In a CSOP, a company pays the brokerage fees on behalf of the investor because it might want to have more of a connection and more loyalty from its shareholders (in contrast to dealing with day traders, high-frequency trading algorithms or other types of activist shareholders). A customer that loves the company’s product might be more inclined to stick around during a difficult patch, for example.
Standard Silicon Valley business model - get as many people on the platform as possible, and then monetize later (probably as a marketing channel, but they also have some other monetization strategies in the works). They batch their transactions, and they are themselves a broker dealer, so their internal per-trade cost is extremely low.
Looks like they are some sort of stock re-selling business of sorts? You can buy partial shares apparently. I guess they work like a fond, that you buy into and pick your own portfolio, basically?
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Also slightly OT, but Loyal3 (http://www.loyal3.com) provides fee-free stock trading - both entry and exit. Unfortunately they don't carry TSLA on their platform yet.
How do they make money?
From TechCrunch[1]:
Loyal3 works with publicly-traded companies on creating a Customer Stock Ownership Plan or CSOP. In a CSOP, a company pays the brokerage fees on behalf of the investor because it might want to have more of a connection and more loyalty from its shareholders (in contrast to dealing with day traders, high-frequency trading algorithms or other types of activist shareholders). A customer that loves the company’s product might be more inclined to stick around during a difficult patch, for example.
[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/12/loyal3/
Standard Silicon Valley business model - get as many people on the platform as possible, and then monetize later (probably as a marketing channel, but they also have some other monetization strategies in the works). They batch their transactions, and they are themselves a broker dealer, so their internal per-trade cost is extremely low.
Looks like they are some sort of stock re-selling business of sorts? You can buy partial shares apparently. I guess they work like a fond, that you buy into and pick your own portfolio, basically?