Etrade and small investors

Back in 2000 at the height of the dot com bubble, I opened an Etrade account and populated it with 10k of my hard earned money. Unlike many postings I have read on the Internet about Etrade, I found them to be a fairly decent provider of stock trading services. Trade executions have always been fast and accurate. Unfortunately, my stock picking skills have not always been the best. As the funds in my account began to erode through transaction fees and poor stock picks, I decided to try a "buy and hold" strategy. It wasn't until I noticed the first inactivity fee that I realized that Etrade was no longer a good place for a small investor.

The small print says that if you do not make a trade during a quarter and have less than ten thousand in your account, Etrade will deduct $40 from your account. I noticed the deduction as soon as I received my statement. But other small investors who did not notice the charge have lost hundreds of dollars. This week I closed my Etrade account. The inactivity fee was not the only reason I had for closing the account. Obviously, if things had gone more in my favor with the stocks that I owned, I wouldn't have had to think about closing the account in the first place.