Modern day stock market investors have been very fortunate in many ways because not only are trading fees as low as they have ever been, but investors have also benefited from free trades in some instances.

However all that appears to be changing. One of the companies that was famous for offering these free trade offers was Zecco. However, although only a certain number of investors who had a reasonably high account balance qualified for this promotion, they have now decided to phase out free trades completely.

They have also decided to increase their prices slightly from $4.50 to $4.95 per trade. This puts them on a par with one of their main rivals, TradeKing, who also charge $4.95 per trade. So it will be interesting to see if these changes have any impact on Zecco’s overall market share.

The good news for investors is that free trades are not necessarily a thing of the past because other brokers still have similar offers, even though you often need large account balances to benefit from them. Plus some brokers are now offering free trade offers on certain instruments such as ETFs, for example, in order to encourage more people to invest in them.

So overall I would say that this is still a great time to be a stock market investor because trading fees are still very low overall, and there are still free trades available if you look around for them.