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shows you how much you paid for the shares of each company including commission and how much your current value is and the profit or loss, including percentages as well as those totals for the account.

Once we entered the realm of takeovers with PortalPlayer/NVIDIA, this easy access to all information changed and I had to go to calculator.com to figure out our percentage gain as this stock simply dropped off our list of stocks purchased. There were a couple days where we simply couldn't do anything with what had been PortalPlayer stock and I could find no obvious details from Scottrade. I knew what had happened to the company, but it would have been nice if Scottrade had been more communicative. I looked at Account History and found the date of purchase. Since September has 30 days, October 31 days, November 30 days, and December 31 days, it is not hard to add them and come up with 122. From the 5th of the month to the 10th is 5 days, so we had PortalPlayer stock for 127 days. If I divide 365 days by 127 days, I get 2.87. 2.87 times 9.49% equals 27.24% annualized rate of return. I did this with simple division and multiplication and I rounded off, but it's possible that the Securities and Exchange commission has stricter rules about calculating return. If this comes out slightly different with their method of calculation, it's still a very good return.

If I have missed some of the back office functions with Scottrade, maybe they should make it easier or more obvious to find things. Otherwise, they could save their clients time by making their automatic calculations and lists comprehensive all the time. Maybe they don't think that company takeovers happen that often or that we have lots of software at our fingertips. I'm a big fan of customer service, so Scottrade, if you're listening...

This is just a peek at our experience with Scottrade's back office. Read more. Take the plunge when you feel comfortable. I'll keep writing.

Learn more about this author, Charles Hicks-Moore.
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